About Rhea Joyce Rubin

A professional librarian and former library director, Rhea Joyce Rubin became an independent library consultant in 1980. Specializing in extending traditional public library services, her work includes consulting and training. On the consulting side she focuses on planning, assessment and evaluation studies, and the establishment of new library services. On the training side she does presentations, workshops, and longer courses including Defusing the Angry Patron. She has worked in 44 states and trained more than 10,000 professionals and paraprofessionals.

As one of the six original trainers for Planning for Results (PFR) and a reader for the New Planning for Results, Rhea often uses PFR with libraries. She also uses other planning approaches including those she has developed herself for public and other libraries serving people with disabilities, and for correctional libraries serving prisoners and staff.

A current emphasis is on outcome measurement and she recently has served as the consultant in that facet of evaluation for the California State Library, the Connecticut State Library, the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners, and the New Jersey State Library. She is also using outcome measurement (OM) in her own assessment projects, such as her evaluation of the ProgrammingLibrarian website of the ALA Public Programs Office (2008-2011), the Eureka Leadership Institute (2008-2011), and the Ready to Read program of the Milwaukee Public Library (2009). She offers workshops on the topic; in 2002, her OM training was selected as the LAMA Institute of the Year. Rhea’s Demonstrating Results: Using Outcome Measurement in Your Library was published in January 2006 by ALA Editions.

Serving people with disabilities is a major focus of Rhea's work. She chaired the Accessibility Assembly of the American Library Association (ALA) for three terms and edited the ALA policy on serving people with disabilities, adopted in January 2001. Rhea’s Planning for Library Services for People with Disabilities was published by ASCLA/ ALA in 2001 which has recently been reprinted.

Rhea Joyce Rubin is the author of 13 books and many journal articles, book chapters and bibliographies. Her first two books, published in 1978, received the Ralph R. Shaw Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Literature of Librarianship in 1980. Her Challenge of Aging was cited as Outstanding Reference Source by ALA in 1984. Her latest book is Defusing the Angry Patron 2^nd edition, 2011.

Rhea has been the recipient of many other honors including the Best of Oakland Award (U.S. Commerce Association), 2009, ASCLA Service Award in 2006, the Exceptional Service Award (from ASCLA/ALA) in 1993 and the Monroe Library Adult Services Award (from ALA) in 1992.

She is listed in Who's Who in the World, Who's Who in America, Who's Who of American Women, Who's Who of American Education, Contemporary Authors, Training and Development Organizations Directory, Consultants and Consulting Organizations Directory, and the Kellogg Foundation Evaluation Consultants Database as well as other sources.

For more information, please see Resume (HTML) or (PDF - 118KB) and Publications List (HTML) or (PDF - 16KB).

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Last updated 9/2011

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