Dear campus community,

I am excited to announce the appointment of Dr. Mihoko Hosoi as University Librarian.  Her start date will be on or around October 27, 2025. 

Mihoko joins us from The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State), where she is the Chief Officer for Collections, Research, and Scholarly Communications and is tenured at the rank of full librarian. She previously served as the Associate Dean for Collections, Research, and Scholarly Communications (2019-2024) at Penn State. In these roles, she has managed a $17 million collections budget and endowments to support collections; reduced costs through effective negotiations; promoted open scholarship; increased visibility of Penn State research; contributed to student success; participated in strategic planning; and engaged with donors. She serves on the University Research Council (URC) and the Faculty Senate Committee on Libraries, Information Systems, and Technology (LIST) as a resource member. She has also contributed to collaborative library collection development through the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA).

Mihoko has over 20 years of experience developing and managing academic libraries, earlier at the California Digital Library (CDL) as the Assistant Director for Systemwide Licensing (2016-2019), the Stanford Graduate School of Business Library (2007-2016), Cornell, UC Santa Barbara, and Duke. While at CDL, she negotiated major licensing agreements collaboratively with other UC colleagues and updated the CDL model license to better support UC researchers. Prior to her library career, she worked in the airline and hotel industries in Japan. Her business and hospitality industry background has made her a user-oriented library administrator.

Mihoko currently serves as an elected Councilor-at-Large of the American Library Association (ALA) and recently served as faculty for the 2025 Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Strategies Institute. Previously, she served as the Chair of the Chief Collection Development Officers of Large Research Libraries Interest Group of the ALA Core and as a member of the HathiTrust Program Steering Committee. She was also a 2024 UCLA Library Senior Fellow. 

Mihoko holds a Ph.D. in Higher Education from Penn State, a Master of Management in Hospitality (MMH) from Cornell University, a Master of Science in Library Science (MSLS) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a BA in Spanish Language and Literature from Seisen University, Tokyo. 

I want to express my gratitude to Tiffany Moxham, Deputy University Librarian and Associate University Librarian for Content and Discovery, for serving as Interim University Librarian until Mihoko starts her position. 

I also want to thank the members of the search committee for their active engagement in helping to select our new University Librarian:

• Mark Long, Dean of the School of Public Policy (Chair)
• Tanya Adams, Director of Human Resources & Executive Searches
• Jacqueline Bates, Chief Financial & Administrative Officer, University Library
• andré carrington, Associate Professor of English
• Alejandra Dubcovsky, Professor of History
• Joseph Genereux, Associate Professor of Chemistry
• Selina Hernandez, HDR/CHC Community Relations Specialist
• Lidia Kos, Vice Provost and Dean for Graduate Studies
• Tiffany Moxham, Deputy University Librarian and Associate University Librarian for Content and Discovery
• Alice Parra Rios, Undergraduate Student & CHASS Senator
• Hang Qiu, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
• Marlo Raveendran, Associate Professor of Management

Please join me in extending a warm welcome to Mihoko.