The 2021 Judith M. Wright Fellowship
Applications Now Open for Summer 2021
The D'Angelo Law Library at the University of Chicago is accepting applications for the 2021 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 $4,000 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.
Fellowship - Summer 2021 - The 2021 fellowship will be conducted online and remotely.
The Fellowship is intended to 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 overall functions, policies and practices of the D'Angelo Law Library 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 write and submit a report summarizing and reflecting on their experiences working at the D'Angelo Law Library.
The project for Summer 2021 will be one of the following:
1) The D'Angelo Law Library engages in a range of approaches and tools to gather input from its community, in particular from students and faculty, on the use of services and resources. The 2021 Wright Fellow will develop a coordinated assessment plan to evaluate the success of D’Angelo’s services for faculty and students, including marketing and outreach of those services. In developing the plan, the Fellow also will review the current assessment tools and approaches including data collection, regular surveys, meetings with student groups, and faculty interviews. The Fellow also will consider how best to gather input through future assessments on unmet faculty and student needs for D’Angelo services and resources.
2) The D'Angelo Law Library has an extensive orientation and training program for University of Chicago Law School students that includes various general learning sessions, research guides, and customized training and research support for courses and programs. The D'Angelo librarians also maintain a resource guide to the many digital tutorials created and maintained by law database vendors, including Westlaw, Lexis, Bloomberg Law, and HeinOnline. The 2021 Wright Fellow will expand the learning opportunities available to UChicago law students by creating digital tutorials specific to D'Angelo services and collections.
3) The D’Angelo Law Library has maintained dual-operations in 2020 and 2021 with staff members working remotely and on staggered schedules onsite in the library building. As D’Angelo supervisors proceed to hire new full-time and part-time employees in the future, the Library will adopt an approach to onboarding that enables aspects of orientation and training to be delivered online and asynchronously. The 2021 Wright Fellow will work with D’Angelo supervisors to design and create an online orientation program for new staff members including videos, tutorials, and documentation with both visual and textual content.
The Judith M. Wright Fellowship provides $4,000 for a minimum of six consecutive weeks of temporary, full-time work to occur between June 14 and September 3, 2021. 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, 2021. The successful applicant will be selected in April 2021.
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