I am pleased to announce that we have hired Wafaa Salaje-Neil to the position of Assistant Map Librarian at Branner Earth Sciences Library & Map Collections. This position was previously held by Jane Ingalls until her retirement in 2015. Wafaa has been working as a metadata specialist / copy cataloger at Green Library since 2010.

She worked on the Egyptian movie poster project, the Newark newspapers project, and cataloging a special collection of various Arabic material previously from the Hoover Institute. From 2007 to 2008 she worked as the non-Western collections librarian and cataloger at Lane Medical Library. Wafaa brings impressive language skills to the position, which is helpful when dealing with a map collection worldwide in scope. She is fluent in Arabic, English, and French with reading level Latin, Russian, and Spanish.  

Wafaa will catalog new cartographic materials coming into Branner as well as on geospatial metadata projects with Kim Durante. She will take an active role in helping catalog the 500+ maps at Branner Library that will be transferred to the David Rumsey Map Center.  

Wafaa received a BA in French and an MLIS from San Jose State University, an Islamic Codicology I (certificate) from Stanford, and received a Project Management certification from De Anza College. In her spare time she practices Chinese/Japanese ink painting and calligraphy, cross-stitch, reading of foreign literature as well as non-fiction books, watching movies, and hiking.

Please join me in welcoming Wafaa to Branner!