The Manuscripts Division is please to announce two recent hires: Christy Smith and Joe Geller. Both have been long time soft-funded staff members at the library. 

Accessions Manager

The position of Accessions Manager in Manuscripts recently became vacant and was filled by a long time staff member - Christy Smith.

Christy has worked in the Department of Special Collections at Stanford University Library since 1992, originally as an hourly employee for the University Archives and Rare Books. You may be familiar with her main project in the archives which was to enter description for images in the Stanford Historical Photograph Collection scanning project. Since 1999, she has also coordinated work at the Arizona Cactus Garden on campus.

In 2009, Christy began working for the Manuscripts Unit on such projects as the R. Stuart Hummel family papers digitization and processing project, the Benoit Mandelbrot papers processing project (still in process), and lent her metadata expertise to the Bassi-Veratti project.

Lead Processing Archivist

A major addition to our unit was the creation of a new Processing Archivist position in Manuscripts. We are very happy to welcome Joe Geller back to Manuscripts in this position!

After several years working as a curatorial assistant to the Curator for American and British Literature, Joe began working in Manuscripts in 2009. His first project was processing the R. Stuart Hummel family papers. He developed new workflows for processing a large collection for concurrent digitization. Researchers may now access these digital objects through the online finding aid. Joe’s recent accomplishment in Manuscripts was the completion of a two-year CLIR-funded project to process the records from both the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund and from the California Rural Legal Assistance organization. For the past 6 months he has been working in the university Archives on another term project.

Joe, who will start in September, will be primarily responsible for processing materials in our backlog based on priorities set by department and library staff. He will start off this fall with assisting in the move to SUL’s Redwood City location of the Manuscripts Unit. The first collection on Joe’s plate will be to finish processing the Benoit B. Mandelbrot papers, including the born-digital components.

The department is thrilled to have both of these staff on board in regular positions – welcome Christy and Joe!