College of William & Mary Law School William & Mary Law School Scholarship Repository Library Staff ubP lications The oW lf Law Library 2019 Retrospective: 30 Lessons Learned (and a Few Strokes of Luck) at The rC ossroads James S. Heller William & Mary Law School,
[email protected] Repository Citation Heller, James S., "Retrospective: 30 Lessons Learned (and a Few Strokes of Luck) at The rC ossroads" (2019). Library Staff Publications. 132. https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/libpubs/132 Copyright c 2019 by the authors. This article is brought to you by the William & Mary Law School Scholarship Repository. https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/libpubs LAW LIBRARY JOURNAL Vol. 111:1 [2019-6] Retrospective: 30 Lessons Learned (and a Few Strokes of Luck) at The Crossroads* James S. Heller** According to legend, blues guitarist Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil to be successful. This article traces a 40-year career in law librarianship full of unforeseen events, both bad and good decisions, and sometimes just good luck. Hopefully, the lessons learned along the way will make others’ professional lives easier than Robert Johnson’s. ¶1 I suspect that few of you who are reading this thought you would have a career as a law librarian—or any type of librarian—when you were a child. Flash back to 1958: Mommy: What do you want to be when you grow up, Jimmy? Jimmy (age 8): I want to be a law school librarian, Mommy. It looks like fun. I can work with smart people who want to help other people and answer questions and teach and write articles and attend conferences and have 5 weeks of vacation every year.