A graduate of Brandeis University, Melnick holds a JD from UCLA School of Law, a Master of Education degree from UCLA School of Education, and a Master of Library and Information Science degree from Rutgers.
He worked as a law clerk for the New York City Department of Investigation and as a senior law clerk with the Law Offices of the Los Angeles County Public Defender. He also served for four years as a library supervisor for the circulation department at Princeton University’s Firestone Library and for six years as a reference librarian at George Washington University School of Law.
Melnick joined Fordham Law in 2005 as a senior reference librarian and was promoted to associate law librarian in 2008. He has served as an adjunct professor of law throughout his time at the School, teaching first-year and advanced legal research classes.
He led the creation of FLASH, the Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History, working with library staff, the Law School faculty, and Fordham’s student-edited law journals. This online institutional repository has significantly increased Fordham Law’s scholarly impact: FLASH contains over 9,600 documents that have been downloaded over 7.4 million times by readers in more than 170 countries.
“This is an amazing time for law libraries,” Melnick said. “Technology and big data are transforming the legal profession as they transform the world. Our job at The Maloney Library is to help the Law School community to make sense of and to profitably use data and information technology while never losing sight of the Law School’s core values.
“In evaluating our work, we will be looking more carefully at outcome measures than ever before,” he said. “Foremost in my mind is empowering and supporting Fordham Law faculty and students.”