ALA names James Neal senior policy fellow

Today, the American Library Association (ALA) appointed James G. (Jim) Neal as a senior policy fellow. Neal will advise the ALA Public Policy & Advocacy Unit (Washington Office) on copyright and licensing matters and provide leadership on selected priority initiatives, including the ALA Policy Corps established in 2017 as one of his presidential initiatives.

Neal is immediate past president of ALA (2017-2018) and university librarian emeritus at Columbia University. Previously, he served as the dean of university libraries at Indiana University and Johns Hopkins University, and held administrative positions in libraries at the Pennsylvania State University, University of Notre Dame, and the City University of New York. Neal has chaired the boards of the Association of Research Libraries and the National Information Standards Organization, and has served on numerous other boards and committees. He is also a former treasurer of ALA.

As a recognized national expert on copyright and licensing issues in higher education, Neal has testified in Congress. He was an advisor to the U.S. delegation at the World Intellectual Property Organization diplomatic conference on copyright, and served on the U.S. Copyright Office 108 Study Group. Neal served on and chaired the copyright and public policy committees of the Association of Research Libraries, chaired the Steering Committee of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, and served the Association of College & Research Libraries on its copyright committee and at many of its conferences and programs. He was for many years the U.S. representative on the Committee on Copyright and Other Legal Matters for the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions and continues as an external advisor.

“ALA is fortunate to have capable individuals such as Jim Neal working with us to advance national policy priorities,” said Alan S. Inouye, ALA’s senior director of public policy and government relations. “Libraries have many policy concerns, so the breadth and depth provided by our senior advisors is essential to our ability to adequately address the myriad issues before us. On behalf of ALA, I extend our sincere thanks for his willingness to serve.”

Neal joins Sari Feldman, Jon Peha, Robert Bocher, senior counsel Alan Fishel and senior advisor Roger Rosen as senior strategic advisors to the ALA Public Policy & Advocacy Unit (Washington Office).