by Jaime Welch-Donahue
James S. Heller, professor of law, professor of public policy, and director of The Wolf Law Library, was honored with the American Association of Law Libraries' (AALL) Hall of Fame Award at the association’s 108th annual meeting and conference in July. The association created the award in 2009 to recognize AALL members “who have made significant, substantial, and long-standing contributions to the profession of legal information management.”
“I joined AALL when I began my career in law librarianship in 1977,” Heller said in an association press release announcing its newest inductees. “It’s been a great career, and my involvement in AALL was rewarded by giving me a number of professional opportunities, as well as a lot of new colleagues and friends.”
Heller has been a member of the William & Mary faculty and director of the law library since 1988. He recently added another title to his name: director of the Summer Program in Madrid. He began his career at George Washington University’s Jacob Burns Law Library, where he was associate law librarian and head of Reader Services. He later served as director of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Division Library and as director of the University of Idaho College of Law Library. He is the author of The Librarian’s Copyright Companion and his articles have appeared in publications such as Law Library Journal, College and Research Libraries, The Journal of the Copyright Society of the USA, and the Richmond Journal of Law and Technology. He is a frequent lecturer on copyright issues. Heller has served as president of the American Association of Law Libraries and of both the Virginia and Southeastern chapters of AALL.
A graduate of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, he received a J.D. Cum Laude from the University of San Diego School of Law and M.L.S. from the University of California (Berkeley) School of Library and Information Studies.
