Professor & Director of the Law Library at Georgetown Profiled

A pdf doc published by Georgetown profiles their law library director Michelle Wu.. well worth a read


Here’s what’s said? and you can find the original document at

http://www.law.georgetown.edu/alumni/magazine/2011-spring/downloads/WuLibrarian.pdf

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Michelle Wu sums up her life choices and professional successes in one word: serendipity.

?I have stumbled into every position so far,? she says modestly of a career as a law librarian that is indisputably impressive and still in its early stages.
In addition to serendipity, Michelle has a good deal of drive and determination. As a successful high school gymnast, she didn?t quit the sport until she
had sprained her ankle 13 times.

Growing up in Michigan, where Michelle?s father was a mathematics professor, was not always easy. Michelle and her sister were harassed in school for being Chinese, a family acquaintance was left permanently injured by a racial attack, and when a white supremacist decided to run for local office, the family decided to move to California. It was during college at the University of California San Diego, where Michelle was studying to be a
doctor, that her serendipitous career began.

Her roommates were preparing to take the LSAT and she helped them by mapping out the logic puzzles. On a lark, she decided to sit for the test herself
and applied to two local law schools. When she was awarded a scholarship to California Western School of Law, she decided to try it but assumed she would still go back to medical school. Needless to say, she never did.

Michelle worked during law school in the San Diego County Law Library shelving books. She found it to be a ?fascinating environment? and began to shadow the reference librarian as he taught the patrons ? most of them pro se litigants ? how to do legal research and gave them an introduction to civics along the way. Someone else at the library had a contact at the prestigious University of Washington law librarianship program and encouraged her to apply.

The rigorous program requires a J.D., so it narrows the field. There were seven people in her graduating class at the University of Washington,
and Michelle had found her niche. She thrived in her new profession and loved the variety that academic librarianship offered; she published, taught, managed people and the flow of information ? and thought hard about the future of information management. Serendipity struck again as Michelle looked for her first job as a law librarian. She had numerous call-back interviews scheduled, but her first was at George Washington?s Law Library. When an offer
came the following day, she took it and cancelled all her other interviews. It was also a time of big changes in technology, and ……… Read rest at link above