The 2024 Judith M. Wright Fellowship

Applications Now Open for Summer 2024

The D'Angelo Law Library at the University of Chicago is accepting applications for the 2024 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 Fellowships give 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, the Fellow 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.

The project for Summer 2024 will be one of the following:

1) 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 2024 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.

2) The D’Angelo Law Library has a history of collecting historical and institutional publications of 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 2024 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 have gained experience managing unique materials and produced documentation on effective handling for preservation, discovery, and access.

3) The D’Angelo Law Library has a vast collection of foreign, comparative, and international law (FCIL) materials curated for scholarly research and learning at the University of Chicago. The 2024 Wright Fellow will work with assorted FCIL miscellanea as potential additions to the D’Angelo collection, considering selection criteria, user needs, and forward-looking collection development policies. Under the guidance of the Foreign and International Law Librarian, the Fellow will review items in this retrospective collection, identify general categories, consider FCIL collection policies of other similar institutions for innovative, future-thinking approaches, and suggest options for D’Angelo. Upon completing this project, the 2024 Wright Fellow will learn about developing collections in an academic law library, specifically for FCIL materials.

4) The D’Angelo Law Library provides research assistance to students, faculty, and staff of the Law School and the University both in-person and through asynchronous and synchronous virtual reference services. The reference inquiries in our virtual channels have become increasingly complex and interdisciplinary, increasing the necessity for knowledge sharing among the D’Angelo reference team. The 2024 Wright Fellow will review reference inquiries submitted through D'Angelo's virtual channels and complete a report summarizing and analyzing these reference transactions, including recommendations for improving D'Angelo's internal FAQ and research guides. Through this project, the Fellow will develop valuable knowledge about reference services in an academic law library and experience preserving institutional knowledge.

The Judith M. Wright Fellowship provides $5,000 for a minimum of six consecutive weeks of temporary, full-time work to occur between June 10 and September 13, 2024. The candidate selected will be paid hourly at 40 hours per week, for six weeks.

Eligibility and Requirements:

The Fellowship is open to recent graduates or currently enrolled students of an accredited library science or information science program, or to recent graduates or currently enrolled students in a J.D. program at an ABA-accredited law school. Applicants must demonstrate an interest in academic law librarianship through appropriate coursework or previous experience.

Applicants should submit a letter of application expressing their interest in this opportunity and their commitment to a career in academic law librarianship. In addition, applicants should submit a resumé including a description of their library or information science graduate program and/or J.D. degree program, including any coursework in law librarianship or legal information resources; the names and e-mail addresses of three professional references; and an indication of which of the proposed projects would be of interest to them. Applicants must be eligible to work in the United States. The University of Chicago is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer.

The deadline for applications is March 29, 2024. The successful applicant will be selected in April 2024.

Send applications (email submission only) to:

Sheri Lewis

Director of the D'Angelo Law Library

University of Chicago

1121 E. 60th Street

Chicago, IL 60637

shl@uchicago.edu