It is with sadness that I announce the departure of our lead processing archivist, Joe Geller, who is relocating to the east coast. He will be greatly missed by all our staff on the Redwood City campus and throughout the library.

Joe started at SUL in 2006 as a curatorial assistant for Annette Keogh, the former curator for British and American Literature. During these years, I was fortunate to work with Joe as he processed several literature collections, notably:  Irving Rosenthal papers, Rae Armantrout papers, and Edward Dahlberg papers.

Joe eventually moved over to Special Collections’ Manuscripts Division to plan and run our first large processing to digitization project in collaboration with the DLSS Dept. Over 3,000 digital objects are linked from the R. Stuart Hummel family papers. Following this, Joe took on another large complex project which was funded by CLIR. In two years, Joe’s team processed over 2,000 linear feet from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (addenda from 1996-2002) and records from the California Rural Legal Assistance organization. 

After a very brief stint in the University Archives division, Joe returned to Manuscripts as our main processing archivist. His return was fortunate for us as our division was being relocated to the Redwood City campus that winter (2013). He was pivotal in helping to plan and execute the move of our collections from campus to RWC. And, at the same time, he managed to process the Ann Rosener papers. During the first year in RWC, Joe supervised the Road & Track pilot project, completed processing of the Benoit Mandelbrot papers, and just recently finished processing of the Wylie Wong collection of May's Studio photographs and San Francisco Chinatown ephemera. 

Aside from the impressive list of collections that he has made discoverable and available for research, Joe has been a wonderful and valued colleague. We will all miss him a great deal and wish him all the best in his future endeavors.