INDIANAPOLIS — Gabriel R. Rios, M.L.I.S., will join the IU School of Medicine in January as director of the Ruth Lilly Medical Library.
Rios, an associate professor and deputy director of the Lister Hill Library of the Health Sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, will serve as the senior administrative leader for the Ruth Lilly Medical Library at the IU School of Medicine, the second-largest medical school in the country.
He will provide oversight to the delivery of academic and knowledge-based information resources and tools, as well as to aligning the library’s strategic plan with the goals of the IU School of Medicine across its missions of education, research and clinical service.
Rios is an elected member of the executive board of directors for the Medical Library Association and holds an appointment to the Biomedical Library and Informatics Review Committee of the National Library of Medicine. He is a frequent lecturer at national meetings on a variety of topics in emerging technologies and health literacy for librarians. He has published scholarly works in a number of peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Library Administration and the Journal of Hospital Librarianship.
Rios also holds a joint appointment in the University of Alabama School of Medicine’s Comprehensive Center for Healthy Aging, where he serves as the health literacy consultant on several federal and foundation grants. He coordinates the library liaison program and serves as liaison for the University of Alabama School of Dentistry.
His previous experience includes positions as associate director for public services at the Dolph Briscoe Library, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, and assistant director for information services and technology at University of Virginia.
Rios holds a master’s degree in library and information science from the University of Texas at Austin and a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from the University of Texas at San Antonio.
He succeeds Julie McGowan, M.L.S., Ph.D., who served as associate dean for information resources and education technology at the Indiana University School of Medicine and director of the Ruth Lilly Medical Library. She also is director of information resources, professor of knowledge informatics and of pediatrics from 1999 to 2011.