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

University of California, Berkeley; Berkeley (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

The University of California, Berkeley, School of Law Library is seeking an Associate Director for Digital Research Infrastructure to lead development, integration, and strategic advancement of the Library’s technology and digital services.

This role supports scholarly communication, responsible adoption of legal practice technologies, and student and faculty research through emerging tech and sustainable digital infrastructure.

Responsibilities

• Provides strategic direction and leadership for digital research infrastructure and scholarly communications in a law library context.
• Oversees staff, mentors, and evaluates performance across the new Digital Research, Technology, and Scholarly Services department.
• Teaches iterations of Advanced Legal Research and guides faculty and students in digital tooling and AI-powered legal research methods.

Job description

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.
• Leveraging 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.