The Library Innovation Lab is a team of librarians, programmers, artists, and lawyers with a broad mission: to build open-source tools and services for open knowledge, available to everyone and in the public interest, that solve emerging information problems from the perspective of the world's largest academic law library. We currently support three long-running services ( Perma, H2O Open Casebook, and the Caselaw Access Project ) as well as a range of shorter-term experiments. On the tech side, we work most often with Django, Vue, and Postgres.
LIL offers a rare mix of contemplation and action: we are a small software lab within one of the world’s largest law libraries, with a mission both to try new things and to think deeply about what ought to exist for the long haul. Our mission offers a range of benefits for staff:
We are based in a newly-renovated space on the Harvard Law School campus. Our full-time staff positions are hybrid/in-person; we typically aim to be in the office Tuesday through Thursday. Contractor and fellowship positions may be remote by individual arrangement.
The work and well-being of the Lab are strengthened profoundly by the diversity of our community and our differences in background, culture, experience, racial identity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, and much more. We actively seek and welcome applications from Black and Indigenous people and people of color; women and non-binary people; the LGBTQ+ community; and people with disabilities; as well as applications from researchers and practitioners from across the spectrum of disciplines, methods, and life experiences.
As a member of our engineering team, the backend-focused Senior Software Engineer will build processes related to data movement, transformation, and storage, as well as building APIs and interfaces to surface data to applications and users. The ideal candidate will have experience building performant, testable, and fault-tolerant data engineering pipelines at scale and experience with reading, writing, and running clustered datastores.
To apply: Application form. In addition to Harvard's standard application form, please provide a short cover letter explaining how your career trajectory and interests align with our work and mission.
At LIL, Product & Research Managers are the backbone of a varied and wide reaching product process that manages not only consumer-level design and software development, but also technology experimentation and the convening of in-person and virtual events. The ideal candidate is highly organized and goal oriented, thrives in cross-functional collaboration, and is able to quickly develop a strong perspective on the task at hand while remaining flexible to the road ultimately taken. Existing knowledge of libraries and the broader library ecosystem is optional, but a desire to learn about them is a must.
To apply: Application form. In addition to Harvard's standard application form, please provide a short cover letter explaining how your career trajectory and interests align with our work and mission.
Students: thinking about legal tech, civic tech, or cultural memory? We have options:
Research Assistants: We're seeking paid research assistants with a web development background to help us build open source legal tech and civic tech tools like Perma.cc, Opencasebook.org, and Case.law.
Student Fellows: We offer student fellow positions to provide mentorship to students working on independent projects in the field of open knowledge (legal tech, civic tech, library tech, online governance, etc.). Depending on subject matter and professor relationships, student fellow positions may or may not offer stipend or credit; please reach out to us to discuss.
Eligibility: Positions are open to students inside and outside Harvard, with a preference for students at Harvard Law School and Harvard University.
To apply: send a statement of interest to lil@law.harvard.edu.
The Library Innovation Lab offers a small number of stipended fellowships to people developing tools and communities to explore the future of open knowledge.
Who should apply: Fellowships are a particularly good fit for people— inside and outside academia!—with a track record of building tools or leading communities that advance the conversation about cultural knowledge and the internet, and who need financial and institutional support to take their next steps.
By "cultural knowledge and the internet," we mean questions like: how do established cultural memory institutions adapt to the internet age and help societies reconstruct and remember their history? How do societies govern themselves, coordinate solutions to problems, and decide who to trust in the evolving information landscape? How do we preserve today's knowledge for future generations?
In short, who are we, how did we get here, and where are we going? And who is "we" in a networked world anyway?
By "track record of building tools or leading communities," we mean that we want to see your theory of change and how it operates in the world: how have your beliefs about who we are, where we came from, and where we're going been translated to action, whether in code, in writing, or in community organizing, and what are your next steps?
More concretely, strong fellowship applicants could include:
Fellowship details: Fellowships are individually arranged on a rolling basis, and may be any length from a week to a year. Fellows are expected to visit Harvard in person for a portion of the appointment, but need not be present full time. Stipends are available to support full-time work, but may be prorated depending on time commitment and other sources of support.
To apply: Email a résumé and statement of interest to lil@law.harvard.edu.