Employment Opportunities at AustLII

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1 February 2000

Expressions of interest sought for positions commencing in 2000

The Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII - http://www.austlii.edu.au/) is employing new staff members for 2000 and beyond. We encourage people who are suitably qualified for and interested in the positions described below to apply. Applicants may apply for more than one position.

The positions will be located primarily at AustLII's offices at the Markets Campus of the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), in the Faculty of Law. AustLII is a joint facility of the Faculties of Law at UTS and UNSW.

Information about AustLII's operation can be found in summary form in 'About AustLII', and in more detail in 'The AustLII papers' 1997 (2) JILT .

Applications for the first round of AustLII's appointments in 2000 will close on 28 February 2000. However, further appointments are likely to be made later during the year, and expressions of interest are welcome at any time.

AustLII is looking for staff to fill some or all of the following positions:
(1) Primary legal materials project officer
(2) System administrator and software developer
(3) Secondary legal materials project officer
(4) Legal indexer

(1) Primary legal materials project officer

This position is part of the team responsible for AustLII's primary legal materials - over 50 large scale databases of case law and legislation. Members of the team each have responsibility for management and development of sets of databases, and (depending on qualifications and experience) on the development of new software for text processing.

Members of the team are involved in various research projects funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC) and other funding bodies, including research into new forms of legislation and case law databases.

Qualifications: Tertiary qualifications in Law and Computer Science (or equivalent degree) are essential, but applicants who are near to completion of qualifications will be considered. Applicants require a sound knowledge of, and experience in the use of HTML and internet protocols. Knowledge of Unix, Perl, and any text management tools is desirable.

(2) System administrator and software developer

AustLII's main server is a Sun Enterprise 3000 server (will be upgraded to E4501 server shortly). AustLII also has a number of Ultra 1s and Ultra 5s, as well as PCs and Macs. The servers receive up to 200,000 'hits' per day. This position is part of the team responsible for:

Administering servers running e-mail, WWW, databases, firewall, and other applications.
Configure, optimise, maintain, and troubleshoot hardware and software.
Manage backup, recovery, and security procedures.
Developing data management software.

Qualifications: Tertiary qualifications in Computer Science (or equivalent degree) is essential, but applicants who are near to completion of qualifications will be considered. Applicants require a sound knowledge of internet protocols, and experience in administrating Unix systems (Solaris, OpenBSD) and Apache servers. Knowledge of HTML, C and Perl is desirable.

(3) Secondary legal materials project officer

This position is part of the team responsible for AustLII's secondary legal materials (including subject-specific databases and organisational home pages), and involves the development of databases and HTML resources in a wide range of legal subject areas. At present these include the following:

Resources concerning law reform reports (Australian Law Reform Commission), community legal information (Hot Topics), financial transactions reporting (AUSTRAC), and human rights (AHRIC).
Other home pages and databases in AustLII's secondary legal materials.
Support for the Reconciliation and Social Justice Library on indigenous law materials (Project details).
Aspects of the Australian Treaties Library, Intellectual Property Law Project, and Industrial Law resources on AustLII.

Qualifications: Tertiary qualifications in law are essential but applicants who are near to completion of qualifications will be considered. Qualifications in computer science (or equivalent degree) are desirable, but applicants with a sound knowledge of, and experience in the use of HTML and internet protocols may be accepted. Knowledge of Unix, Perl, and any text management tools is desirable.

We have a particular need at present for a project officer with knowledge of intellectual property law.

(4) Legal indexer

This position is part of the team responsible for AustLII's secondary legal materials , but the major responsibility of the position is the development of AustLII's Australian and Worl Law indexes (catalogs) to legal materials already available on the internet, and creation of search facilities by use of a targeted web spider. Particular indexing/web spider projects include:

Project DIAL (Development of the Internet for Asian Law), a project funded by the Asian Development Bank (Project details), with a focus on world-wide legal materials related to legislation.
Support for internet index aspects of other AustLII projects such as the Reconciliation and Social Justice Library on indigenous law materials (Project details), the Australian Treaties Library, and the Workplace Relations Law Project.

AustLII is creating the most extensive world-wide and Australia-wide access points to legal information on the internet, and this position will play a key role in that development.

Qualifications: Tertiary qualifications in Law or Librarianship (with Law Librarianship specialisation) are essential, but applicants who are near to completion of qualifications will be considered. Applicants require a sound knowledge of, and experience in, indexing or cataloguing legal materials, particularly internet indexing of legal materials. Knowledge and use use of HTML and internet protocols and experience in developing internet resources, are desirable. A degree in computer science is not required for this position.

Please contact ...

Anyone interested in submitting an expression of interest in the positions which are to be created should send the following details by e-mail to AustLII:

A short letter explaining which of the above-listed positions they feel that they are interested and qualified to carry out.
A brief resume of their qualifications, employment history and experience in creating internet resources.

Details should be sent to AustLII's Administrative Officer, Cathy Thomson (cathy@austlii.edu.au). If any attachments are included with your email, please ensure that they are in rtf (rich text format). We cannot guarantee that we can read other forms of attachment.

Telephone enquiries should be directed to AustLII's Executive Director, Philip Chung, on 02 9514 3175.