Driving Education Forward

Ron Wheeler, AALL president and director of the Fineman & Pappas Law Libraries, talks diversity, education, and the importance of innovation in order to move the profession forward.

American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) President and Boston University School of Law director of Fineman & Pappas Libraries Ronald E. Wheeler was featured in the most recent edition of AALL Spectrum magazine. He is the first African-American male president for AALL for the 2016–2017 term. In the piece, Wheeler talks diversity, education, and the importance of innovation in order to move legal libraries forward:

Ronald E. Wheeler Jr. is dedicated to creating greater opportunities for members within the Association by means of education, diversity, and most of all, innovation. Wheeler’s love for the legal industry started a bit unconventionally, but today, the industry and AALL are the driving force that keeps him motivated and excited about the profession. “I briefly ‘dated’ a library school student when I was in my first year of law school in 1987. I was not enjoying law school, and he was ecstatic about his exciting courses in library school. His enthusiasm stuck with me,” Wheeler recalls. After working as a public defender, followed by service with several AIDS nonprofits, he finally decided to give library school a try. Although originally intending to abandon the law altogether and become a general academic librarian, his wise professors told him that with a JD degree, he absolutely had to do law librarianship. …