The American Library Association (ALA) Executive Board has appointed Mary Ghikas as executive director through January 2020, effective immediately. Ghikas has been serving as interim executive director since August 1, 2017, after the retirement of Keith Michael Fiels. She was most recently senior associate executive director of member programs and services.
ALA Executive Director Mary Ghikas (Source: American Libraries)
“Mary has done an excellent job as interim executive director, and we are pleased to officially name her executive director through January 2020,” said ALA President Jim Neal. “Mary provides knowledge, experience, and stability to the association during this important period of transition as she leads critical work in infrastructure, organizational development, and technology for ALA.”
The search process for the executive director will begin in spring 2019 after the position description requirements have been finalized. The ALA Executive Board plans to name a new executive director after the fall board meeting in October 2019. The new executive director will officially start at Midwinter 2020, and Ghikas will support the orientation and transition process through the Annual Conference in June 2020.
Ghikas, who started with ALA in 1995, has her MLS and BA from UCLA as well as her association executive certification (CAE) from the American Society of Association Executives. Throughout her career, she has served in numerous library systems including Chicago Public Library, Los Angeles Public Library, Western New York Library Resources Council, and the U.S. Book Exchange in Washington, DC.
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com. Gary is also the co-founder of infoDJ an innovation research consultancy supporting corporate product and business model teams with just-in-time fact and insight finding.
From the UC Berkeley Library The UC Berkeley Library is full of stories — and not just the ones that line its shelves. The facts you’ll find here are at ...
From The Chicago Tribune: Last week, city and Chicago Public Library officials declared Chicago a sanctuary city for those stories, by establishing “Book Sanctuaries” across the city’s 77 distinct community ...
From Penn State: Penn State University Libraries has expanded its robust scholarly research potential of one of America’s foremost 20th-century writers through the acquisition of the Toby and Betty Bruce ...
From Politico: Far from the trenches in states like Florida and Texas, organizations in deep-blue New York are stepping into the fray by directly lending 25,000 books to non-residents since spring, ...
From the Associated Press: A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were ...
From a ULC Release: The Urban Libraries Council’s new member tool — the Business Value Calculator — provides public libraries with a concrete way to measure and evaluate its contributions ...
From an Ithaka S+R Post by Kurtis Tanaka: As Ithaka S+R’s research has well documented, people in prison have profound information needs and suffer from an equally profound lack of resources ...
DeepMind’s New Chatbot Uses Google Searches Plus Humans to Give Better Answers (via MIT Technology Review) Inside the 15,000-Strong Record Collection at Hawaii’s State Archives (via Vinyl Factory) South Carolina: ...
Direct to the Full Text of the Resolution Introduced by Congressman Raskin 7 pages; PDF. From PEN America: With free expression and the freedom to read being undermined in America’s ...
From a Joint News Release: Paolo Manghi, CTO of OpenAIRE, is co-leading an international team led by University of North Texas that has been awarded a $1.2 million grant from the Mellon Foundation ...
From ALA (via YouTube): R.L. Stine has been writing scary stories for more than 30 years. His books have sold more than 400 million copies and have been translated into ...
From a DPLA Announcement Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is pleased to announce the release of January 6th on the Record: The Investigation into the Attack on the U.S. Capitol, ...
