Associate Director for Digital Research Infrastructure - Law Library - School of Law

The University of California, Berkeley, School of Law (Berkeley Law) is one of the nation's premier law schools, located at one of the world's great universities. The Law Library holds one of the largest law collections in the world, housing an extensive collection of Anglo-American, international, foreign, and comparative law. The Law Library serves a faculty of more than 100, including tenured and tenure-track, clinical, adjunct, and visiting professors and lecturers; more than 1000 J.D. students; 250 LL.M. students; 150 Professional Track LL.M. students in the summer; graduate students from the School of Jurisprudence and Social Policy; more than 100 visiting scholars each year; as well as researchers from other scholarly and legal communities. These include members of the University of California community, private attorneys, and members of the general public. Berkeley Law is the home of the prestigious Robbins Collection, which specializes in religious and civil law, and includes rare books and manuscripts. The Law School has a wide variety of research centers, clinics, and student-initiated projects.

Position Overview

The UC Berkeley Law Library seeks a forward-thinking and experienced Associate Director for Digital Research Infrastructure to lead the development, integration, and strategic advancement of the Law Library's technology and digital services. This position is central to Berkeley Law's efforts to support scholarly communication, the responsible adoption of legal practice technologies, and student and faculty research through emerging technologies and sustainable digital infrastructure.

This leadership role combines responsibility for digital initiatives, scholarly communications, and technology strategy, with a strong service orientation to the needs of an academic law school. The Associate Director provides expert guidance on legal technologies, large data sets, artificial intelligence, and digital tools for faculty research and will also be expected to teach some iterations of Advanced Legal Research. The position will oversee a newly-created department: the Digital Research, Technology, and Scholarly Services department. Lastly, this position will also lead the Law Library's efforts to implement and manage institutional repository services, digital publishing tools, and web-based access to legal scholarship.

The Associate Director reports to the Associate Dean of the Law Library and is a key member of the Law Library's senior leadership group, contributing to strategic planning, cross-departmental coordination, and library-wide innovation.

Duties

Strategic Leadership and Departmental Oversight

• Serves as an essential member of the Law Library management team, advancing library-wide goals related to legal education, scholarly output, and technology.
• Oversees, supervises, and manages department staff; recruits, hires, mentors, and evaluates performance.
• Leads planning and assessment of services related to digital initiatives, scholarly communication, legal technology integration, and web platforms.
• Provides strategic direction and project management for library-wide technology initiatives, working collaboratively with Law School IT and Law School administration.
• Facilitates cross-functional project teams to respond to new technology needs from students, faculty, and staff.

Faculty and Student Support: Legal Technology and Research Services

• Serves as an advisor to reference librarians and directly advises faculty and students on research projects involving legal technologies, large language models (LLMs), large data sets, and other digital or technology-based methodologies.
• Provides guidance on law practice-related technologies, supporting both instruction and scholarship.
• Develops training sessions and documentation on research technologies, including natural language processing, data analysis tools, and AI-powered legal tools.
• Assists in integrating new technologies into legal teaching and empirical research workflows.

Digital Initiatives and Technology Infrastructure

• Leads the development, evaluation, and implementation of new technologies to support library operations, access to resources, user services, and the law school.
• Ensures effective discovery, development, access, and preservation of digital collections.
• Identifies and develops opportunities to access, manipulate, and preserve open data sets and other open-access resources.
• Leverages standards and emerging technologies such as Linked Open Data, BIBFRAME, APIs, Wikidata, and machine learning tools.
• Collaborates with the Associate Director for Collections and Operations to ensure strong metadata practices and interoperability across systems.
• Evaluates integrated library systems (e.g., Alma, TIND, WorldShare, FOLIO) and digital platforms to improve workflows and user experiences.

Scholarly Communication and Institutional Repository Services

• Provides leadership in maintaining and evolving the Law Library's institutional repository and related services to support faculty and student scholarship.
• Supports and advocates for open access, persistent identifiers (e.g., Perma.cc, DOIs, ORCID), and the use of relevant platforms to promote and enhance the discoverability of faculty publications.
• Designs services to assist faculty in managing digital scholarship, research visibility, and compliance with funder mandates.
• Promotes awareness of scholarly communication trends across the law school and the broader scholarly community.

Cross-Departmental Coordination and Innovation

• Coordinates with Reference, Access Services, and Collection Services to ensure cohesive integration of digital services and technologies across the library.
• Develops and disseminates reports, metrics, and assessments that support data-informed decision-making and demonstrate library impact.
• Keeps library leadership informed on local and national developments in digital services, legal technologies as they relate to libraries, legal education and research, and the practice of law.
• Supports the exploration and responsible adoption of open source software to enhance digital infrastructure and services.
• Incorporates privacy considerations into the selection and deployment of digital tools and services.
• Collaborates effectively across the library, the law school, and the broader campus, navigating multiple perspectives and competing priorities.

• Advanced degree ( such as JD, MA, PhD) or equivalent international degree.

• Minimum five years of experience in an academic law library or equivalent legal research environment, such as a corporate law library, law firm library, or government law library.

• Minimum two years of supervisory experience

• Degree in library science from an ALA-accredited institution
• Demonstrated understanding of legal research methodologies and faculty and student needs in a law school setting.
• Experience with emerging technologies relevant to legal research and instruction, such as artificial intelligence, natural language processing, and data science.
• Demonstrated critical thinking in evaluating and adopting new technologies, with the ability to balance competing priorities, such as privacy, security, and equitable access across multiple constituencies.
• Experience managing integrated library systems, digital library platforms, institutional repositories, and scholarly communications services.
• Supervisory and project management experience, with demonstrated ability to lead teams and manage cross-functional projects.
• Excellent communication, collaboration, and problem-solving skills.
• Experience providing or supporting legal research instruction in academic or professional settings.
• Experience and proficiency with software development components including Python, Git, and regular expressions.
• Familiarity with content management systems (e.g., WordPress, Drupal).
• Knowledge of legal publishing platforms, metadata standards, bibliographic standards, and repository workflows.
• Experience working in a collective bargaining environment.

• 3 required (contact information only)

UC Berkeley is committed to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in our public mission of research, teaching, and service, consistent with UC Regents Policy 4400 and University of California Academic Personnel policy (APM 210 1-d). These values are embedded in our Principles of Community, which reflect our passion for critical inquiry, debate, discovery and innovation, and our deep commitment to contributing to a better world. Every member of the UC Berkeley community has a role in sustaining a safe, caring and humane environment in which these values can thrive.

The University of California, Berkeley is an Equal Opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, age, or protected veteran status.

For more information, please refer to the University of California's Affirmative Action and Nondiscrimination in Employment Policy and the University of California's Anti-Discrimination Policy.

In searches when letters of reference are required all letters will be treated as confidential per University of California policy and California state law. Please refer potential referees, including when letters are provided via a third party (i.e., dossier service or career center), to the UC Berkeley statement of confidentiality prior to submitting their letter.

As a University employee, you will be required to comply with all applicable University policies and/or collective bargaining agreements, as may be amended from time to time. Federal, state, or local government directives may impose additional requirements.

Unless stated otherwise, unambiguously, in the position description, this position does not include sponsorship of a new consular H-1B visa petition that would require payment of the $100,000 supplemental fee.

As a condition of employment, the finalist will be required to disclose if they are subject to any final administrative or judicial decisions within the last seven years determining that they committed any misconduct.

• "Misconduct" means any violation of the policies or laws governing conduct at the applicant's previous place of employment, including, but not limited to, violations of policies or laws prohibiting sexual harassment, sexual assault, or other forms of harassment or discrimination, as defined by the employer.
• UC Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment Policy
• UC Anti-Discrimination Policy
• APM - 035: Affirmative Action and Nondiscrimination in Employment