His wife, Nancy Allen, is also a librarian, the Dean of Libraries at the University of Denver.
[6] He was on the board of directors of the Association of Research Libraries and chaired the ARL's Strategic Direction Steering Committee on Influencing Public Policies for 2010–2013.
[7] He is on the board of visitors for the School of Information Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh,[8] and has been a member of the visiting committee for the libraries at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
[9] He is a member of the Libraries' National Council of Washington University in St. Louis,[10] and a trustee of the Denver Art Museum.
[11] In 2002, Williams won the Melvil Dewey Medal of the American Library Association for his "distinguished service to the profession of librarianship".