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Judith M. Wright Law Library Fellowship, University of Chicago (Chicago, IL)

Posted February 17, 2025

The D’Angelo Law Library at the University of Chicago is accepting applications for the Temporary 2025 Judith M. Wright Fellowship. This Fellowship develops promising new professionals in academic law librarianship by supporting a career training program at the D’Angelo Law Library. The Judith M. Wright Fellowship provides $5,000 to a law school or library science student or a recent graduate selected for training at the D’Angelo Law Library for a Fellowship as described below. 

The Fellowship gives candidates interested in law librarianship as a career an opportunity to apply their skills and knowledge in an academic law library setting. Fellows working in the D’Angelo Law Library under the guidance and supervision of the Law Library Director and other librarians will learn about the Library’s overall functions, policies, and practices in both the collections services and user services departments. In addition to participating in the daily work of a premier academic law library, Fellows will undertake and complete a project based on the needs and capabilities of the D’Angelo Law Library and the interests and prior experience of the Fellow. As a requirement for completing the Fellowship, the Fellow will give a presentation on their project and write and submit a report summarizing and reflecting on their experiences working at the D’Angelo Law Library.

Responsibilities

  • The project for Summer 2025 will be one of the following:
    • The D’Angelo Law Library has a history of collecting historical and institutional publications at the University of Chicago Law School. The Library possesses recordings of faculty lectures, interviews, and other Law School events in difficult-to-access formats. The 2025 Wright Fellow will inventory and analyze this backlog of historical and unique items, review best practices for handling historical material, and create workflows for access, tracking permissions, discovery, preservation, and reformatting. Through this project, the Fellow will gain experience managing unique materials and produce documentation on effective handling for preservation, discovery, and access.
    • The D’Angelo Law Library furthers its mission of contributing to the academic and scholarly success of the Law School by teaching legal research classes to first-year and upper-year students. The 2025 Wright Fellow will research the latest pedagogical literature on critical information literacy and its application to legal research, teaching, and practice. The Fellow will then collaborate with current librarian-instructors to develop lesson plans to incorporate instruction on critical information literacy into the existing curriculum. Upon completing this project, the Wright Fellow will have learned about cutting-edge theories in legal research instruction and gained experience in applying theory to develop practical lesson plans.
    • The D’Angelo Law Library builds collections and resources of local, national, and international materials to further research and learning in law and related disciplines. The Library plans to develop and curate research resources on the history of policing and interactions between the community and the police in Chicago. The 2025 Wright Fellow will work with Law Library staff and Law School and other campus partners to locate existing relevant materials in the University of Chicago Library’s collections and identify useful resources outside of the University, including in other library collections and special archives and holdings of organizations working in this area. The Fellow will create a LibGuide of resources to facilitate research on policing and police work in Chicago and produce a report of findings to guide the D’Angelo Law Library staff to continue their future development of the research materials. Through this project, the Wright Fellow will learn about the history of policing in Chicago and some of the legal, social, and civic issues involved and gain experience in curating a unique set of research resources.
    • The D’Angelo Law Library supports the scholarship of the University of Chicago Law School faculty, including data-driven scholarship. Working with the D’Angelo librarians, the Law School’s Coase-Sandor Institute for Law and Economics (CSI), and other campus partners, the 2025 Wright Fellow will develop a set of recommended tools and best practices for managing and archiving data materials acquired and curated for the University of Chicago Law School’s faculty scholarship. This work will evaluate the tools and resources the D’Angelo Law Library and other campus partners provide to support empirical research, such as the Empirical Legal Research Guide and the Center for Digital Scholarship. Upon completing this project, the Wright Fellow will have learned about empirical law faculty scholarship and developed valuable knowledge about the tools and principles for working with data created in academic research.

Qualifications

Education:

  • Degree from an accredited library science or information science program and/or a JD from an ABA-accredited law school required, or must be currently enrolled in an accredited library science or information science program and/or a J.D. program at an ABA-accredited law school.

Experience:

  • An interest in academic law librarianship demonstrated through appropriate coursework or previous experience is required.

Working Conditions and Physical Requirements:

  • This position is required to work onsite at the D’Angelo Law Library 5 days per week.

Compensation

The Judith M. Wright Fellowship provides $5,000 for six consecutive weeks of temporary, full-time work in the summer 2025, ideally between June 16 and September 12, 2025. The candidate selected will be paid at a rate of $20.83 per hour at 40 hours per week for six weeks.

How to Apply

Submit Resume, letter, 3 references, description of LIS experience to: https://uchicago.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/External/job/Chicago-IL/Temporary-2025-Judith-M-Wright-Fellowship_JR29208-1

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