News From the Legal Information Institute (LII): First Ever Original Content Collections Manager Hired & 1,000+ Improved Definitions Now Live on Wex Legal Reference

From a Legal Information Institute (Cornell Law School) Blog Post:

[Last year] We decided to offer summer employment to any Cornell student who approached us, and to advertise that offer aggressively within the (virtual) halls of Cornell Law School. This would be a classic “win-win” scenario, where more students would find meaningful, law-related summer employment, while we (and you!) would get more new original content than we are usually capable of producing. It seemed like a classic opportunity to, as the old saying goes, take the lemons we’d been handed and make some lemonade.

We began feverishly planning an ambitious student project to make use of the extra labor. We wanted to refurbish as many of the short definitions in our Wex legal reference as possible.

It all (somehow) came together, and since this time last year we have seen dozens of students on the Wex Definition Team research and draft more than 1,000 improved Wex definitions.

[Clip]

We were able to raise sufficient funds to hire our first ever Original Content Collections Manager. Just a few weeks ago, we were able to welcome Nichole McCarthy to our team!

[Clip]

Trained as a librarian, she has worked in public, academic, and specialized libraries and previously supported the Law Library of Congress as a Metadata Intern. She has also worked as a librarian at a law firm and as a volunteer archivist for KRIA: The Icelandic Constitution Archives, where she archived over 1,000 webpages. In addition to her M.S. in Library and Information Science, Nichole has a B.A. in Women’s Studies and a M.S. in Criminal Justice Administration.

Learn More, Direct to Complete Blog Post

Direct to Legal Information Institute Website

Direct to Wex Legal Encyclopedia

Filed under: Archives and Special Collections, Libraries, News