UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Mihoko Hosoi, Penn State University Libraries’ chief officer for collections, research and scholarly communications, has been named the next University Librarian at University of California, Riverside (UCR), effective late October 2025.
The university librarian is the chief executive officer of the University of California, Riverside Library, which is a member of the Association of Research Libraries and the Center for Research Libraries.
“Since joining Penn State in November 2019, Dr. Hosoi has provided strategic direction to sustain comprehensive collections in support of the University’s research and teaching mission. I have admired Dr. Hosoi’s passionate drive to improve and expand users’ access to scholarly resources,” said Faye A. Chadwell, dean of University Libraries and Scholarly Communications. “Her legacy at the University Libraries and Penn State will be felt for years to come.”
Hosoi’s accomplishments at Penn State include numerous favorable negotiations with scholarly publishers, including the United States’ first Read and Publish (R&P) agreement with SAGE Publishing in 2022; active promotion of open access to increase the visibility of Penn State research; robust engagement within the BTAA Collection Development Officers (CDO) group to advance collaborative collection development; oversight for University Libraries collection budgets during several rescissions; participation in the Libraries’ strategic planning and personnel management and the establishment of the Libraries’ Shared Content Leadership Group.
At Penn State, Hosoi has served as the University Libraries representative on the University Research Council and as a resource member for the University Faculty Senate Committee on Libraries, Information Systems and Technology. Beyond Penn State, she has held several national leadership roles, more recently as an American Library Association (ALA) councilor-at-large, as chair of the ALA’s Chief Development Officers of Large Research Libraries Interest Group and as faculty for the 2025 Association of Research Libraries Strategies Institute. She also has contributed to collaborative library collection development through the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA), was selected as a 2024 UCLA Library Senior Fellow and previously was a member of the HathiTrust Program Steering Committee.
Prior to her current role at the University Libraries, Hosoi served as the associate dean for collections, research, and scholarly communications from 2019 to 2024, until she became the chief officer. 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 was tenured and promoted to the rank of full librarian in July 2024.
“It’s bittersweet. I came to Penn State six years ago thinking I might retire here. Most of my accomplishments involved collaboration across Penn State, and I learned so much from my colleagues. I feel honored to be selected to be the University Librarian at UCR and appreciate colleagues’ kind words congratulating me,” Hosoi said.
Hosoi has more than 20 years of experience developing and managing academic libraries, including at the California Digital Library, the Stanford Graduate School of Business Library, Cornell, UC Santa Barbara and Duke universities. Prior to her library career, she worked in the airline and hotel industries in Japan. She holds a doctor of philosophy degree in higher education from Penn State, a master of management degree in hospitality from Cornell University, a master of science degree in library science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and an undergraduate degree in Spanish language and Literature from Seisen University, Tokyo.