Diane Zabel is new RUSA president
Contact: Cathleen Bourdon
Executive Director, RUSA
312-280-4395
cbourdon@ala.org
For Immediate Release
May 13, 2005
Diane Zabel is new RUSA president
CHICAGO - Diane Zabel, the Louis and Virginia Benzak Business Librarian (an endowed position) at the Schreyer Business Library, Penn State University, is the new president of the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA), a division of the American Library Association (ALA). She will assume office in July 2005.
“One of my goals is to grow membership in RUSA, especially among library science students and beginning professionals,” said Zabel. “At RUSA's invitation, I recently had the opportunity to attend an excellent training session offered by the American Society of Association Executives where I learned that leaders in an association have an obligation to develop future leaders in the association, and that millennials (those born between 1981 and 1999) are attracted to associations that offer meaningful and enjoyable opportunities for active participation, be it virtual or face-to-face.”
“I look forward to working with other RUSA members to promote and enhance a culture that will be inviting to prospective and current members in order to develop future leaders in RUSA and by extension, the profession,” Zabel added.
Zabel previously served as behavioral and social sciences librarian and a general reference librarian at Penn State. Zabel has a bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin, River Falls, and a master's degree in library science and a master's degree in urban planning from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
She is the co-author of “The Flexible Workplace: A Sourcebook of Information and Research” (Quorum Books, 2001) and “The Quality Management Sourcebook: An International Guide to Materials and Resources” (Routledge, 1997). She has written several book chapters and articles relating to the literature of psychology and sociology, hospitality and tourism education, and total quality management. She is interested in instructional issues and her article “A Reaction to Information Literacy and Higher Education” was published in the January 2004 issue of the
Journal of Academic Librarianship. She also has published more than 25 book reviews.
An active ALA member, Zabel has chaired many committees relating to continuing education, information literacy, and building library collections. She chaired the RUSA Collection Development and Evaluation Section in 1999-2000. Since 1999, she has served as the editor of the "Alert Collector" column in
Reference & User Services Quarterly. She also serves on the Editorial Board of the
Publications in Librarianship series, a monographic series that has been published by the Association of College and Research Libraries since 1952. Zabel is a member of the editorial board of the
Journal of Academic Librarianship .
RUSA is the ALA division devoted to supporting the delivery of reference/information services to all groups and of general library services to adults. Its 5,000 members represent all types of libraries.
