Dr. Gary Shaffer serves as the Leadership and Administration Professor at the San Jose State University School of Information in the College of Information, Data, and Society. Prior to serving SJSU he served as Director of Library Service for the Cities of Palm Desert and Glendale California. He also worked at the University of Southern California as Assistant Dean of USC Libraries and the Center for Library Leadership and Management and headed the Library and Information Science program at USC’s Marshall School of Business. He taught at USC for seven years. Shaffer is also the former chief executive officer of the Tulsa City-County Library, a 24-location, award-winning public library system located in Northeastern Oklahoma. He has also worked for the Brooklyn, Los Angeles County, and Sacramento public libraries.
Shaffer is the author of the books Emotional Intelligence & Critical Thinking for Library Leaders and Creating the Sustainable Public Library: The Triple Bottom Line Approach. He also co-edited the book The Sustainable Library’s Cookbook with incoming American Library Association President Dr. Raymond Pun. He received his Ph.D. in Managerial Leadership from Simmons University in Boston. In addition to his doctorate, he holds masters’ degrees in library and information science (MLIS), professional writing (MPW), and intellectual property law (LL.M.). He has advocated on behalf of libraries and archives for copyright reform at the UNs’ World Intellectual Property Organization’s Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights in Geneva, Switzerland.
Shaffer was twice-elected to the board of the Public Library Association and has also served as councilor-at-large to the American Library Association Council. He is a former President of the California Library Association. He has also served on the executive board of the Southern California Library Cooperative and Califa (a library consortium), where he served as its treasurer. In 2006, he was named a Library Journal Mover & Shaker: One of 50 people shaping the future of libraries. Prior to working in libraries, Shaffer supervised Fortune 500 accounts for advertising agencies.