Sharon L. Bostick is Dean of Libraries at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. She was formerly Dean of Libraries at the University of Missouri Kansas City, Director of Libraries at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and has held library positions at other universities in the United States. She holds a Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration from Wayne State University, an AMLS (Library Science) from the University of Michigan, and a BA in English and Counseling from Oakland University. She has also worked as an independent consultant for libraries and higher education. She has written and presented extensively on information-seeking behavior in university students, on academic and library consortia in the United States and on academic library buildings. She created the Library Anxiety Scale, a statistically validated instrument and is co-author of the book "Library Anxiety: Theory, Research and Applications".