Carol Collier Kuhlthau is Professor Emerita of Library and Information Science at Rutgers University where she directed the graduate program in school librarianship that has been rated number one in the country by U.S. News.  She achieved the rank of Professor II, a special rank at Rutgers requiring additional review beyond that for full professor. She also chaired the Department of Library and Information Science and was the founding director of the Center for International Scholarship in School Libraries (CISSL). She is internationally known for her groundbreaking research on the Information Search Process and for the ISP model of affective, cognitive and physical aspects in six stages of information seeking and use.  She has authored Seeking Meaning: A Process Approach to Library and Information Services and Teaching the Library Research Process and published widely in referred journals and edited volumes. A new book, Guided Inquiry: Learning in the 21st Century, authored with her daughters Leslie K. Maniotes and Ann K. Caspari is now available through Libraries Unlimited.

She has received numerous awards including: American Society of Information Science and Technology (ASIST) Research in Information Science Award; Association of Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) Award for Outstanding Contributions in the Field of Information Science and Library Education; Library and Information Technology Association (LITA) Kilgour Research Award; American Library Association (ALA) Shera Award for the Outstanding Research; Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Dudley Award; American Association of School Librarians’ (AASL) Distinguished Service Award; Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT)Award for Outstanding Contributions to the School Library Media Field through Publishing, and Teaching.

Kuhlthau has held visiting appointments at the University of Tampere, Finland; University College of Boras, Sweden; University of Gothenburg, Sweden; The Royal School of Librarianship, Copenhagen, Denmark; Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil; National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan; Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan; Keio University, Tokyo, Japan; Doshisha University Kyoto, Japan; University of Leiden, The Haag Campus, The Netherlands; Aalborg University, Denmark; University of Technology, Sydney, Australia; Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia; School of Information Management and Systems at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia; University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong; Fulbright Senior Scholar, University Strossmayer, Osijek, Croatia; Department of Information Management, Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland.