Betty J Turock

For twenty-two years Betty J. Turock was a member of the Rutgers University faculty. Prior to her retirement she was Professor and Associate Dean of the School of Communication and Information (SC&I). For eight years she served as Chair of the Department of Library and Information Science (LIS). Dr. Turock is a Past President of the 68,000-member American Library Association (ALA). As President she traveled over 300,000 miles to focus the interest of the people of the United States on Equity on the Information Superhighway, just and equitable access to electronic information for all people of our nation and the nations of the world, now and throughout the 21 st century. She was also the founder of the ALA-Spectrum Initiative, a scholarship program that seeks to enhance the diversity of the profession. Turock has held management posts across the United States in public, academic, and school libraries, including as Assistant Director, then Director of the Montclair (NJ) Public Library, assistant director of the Rochester and Monroe County (NY) Library System, head of extension services at the Forsyth County (NC) Library System, and school media specialist for the Alhambra School System, Phoenix, AZ. The author of more than ninety publications, she has also served as senior advisor in the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, Library Programs. Dr.Turock earned a bachelor’s degree, magna cum laude, from Syracuse University, her master’s and Ph.D. degrees from Rutgers. She is a member of the Board of Visitors of Johns Hopkins Medicine, and the Boards of the American Library in Paris, France; Keystone College, LaPlume, PA; and the Trejo Foster Foundation, Tucson, AZ.