Aslihan Bulut will serve as the Acting Law Librarian of Congress

Aslihan Bulut will serve as the acting Law Librarian of Congress. Aslihan brings a wealth of experience to her new role of providing strategic leadership from her current position, the deputy law librarian for collections at the Law Library of Congress, a role she has been serving in since 2019.

Aslihan managed and oversaw the Global Legal Collections Directorate in establishing priorities, design, launch and execution of Law Library initiatives related to physical and digital collections. Prior to joining the Law Library, Aslihan served as the director of academic services in the California State University system at the San Jose State University, King Library campus, where she provided leadership, planning, and administration for collection development, research support, and instruction.

Aslihan has worked in academic law libraries most of her professional career. She served as the program coordinator and librarian for foreign, comparative and international law at the Langdell Law Library of Harvard Law School for over seven years, where she led a team of professional librarians in coordinating all of the library services to the graduate students enrolled in Doctor of Juridical Science and Master of Laws programs at Harvard Law School. She coordinated projects involving the international, foreign, and comparative collections at Langdell Law Library and was the library editor for ShariaSOURCE.

In addition to selecting for jurisdictions across Central, South, and Southeast Asia, she provided research services to Harvard law faculty members, including preparing bibliographies, and conducting extensive legal, academic, interdisciplinary, and policy related research. Aslihan has also worked as a reference librarian and lecturer in law at the Arthur W. Diamond Law Library of Columbia University, School of Law. There, she completed year-long rotations as the interlibrary loan department supervisor, first-year legal research and writing coordinator, Westlaw/Lexis liaison, and foreign, comparative, and international law coordinator. She provided reference services in Anglo-American, international, and foreign law to faculty, students and all other patrons, including creating bibliographies, legislative histories, and in-depth and general research. She also co-developed and co-taught legal research instruction classes for the first year law students, created and taught a Summer Law Associate Research Refresher program, and wrote various research guides on topics like human rights and Islamic law.

Aslihan has been a presenter at numerous national and international library forums, such as the Boulder Conference on Legal Information, the Global Legal Skills Conference and the Annual Conference of the Special Libraries Association. Aslihan has a JD from the City University of New York, School of Law, an MLS from Rutgers University, School of Communication, Information, and Library Science, and a BS from Montclair State University.