The entire staff of The Bancroft Library received this email farewell from one of our graduating student employees, and as you can imagine, the sentiments expressed brightened everyone's day.
Dear All,
This is one of the most amazing places I can fathom working in— I get to sneeze on the
dust of dead pioneers' journals, illuminated manuscripts, copies of Ulysses, thus actually taking
in molecules of their substance, which has hopefully by now rubbed some wisdom into me!— and
the aisles are clearly haunted in some of the darker tiers too . . . Honestly I think this kind of
library is necessary to the psychic health of the world, and its a serious privilege to get to know
its insides and help its blood circulate, to be welcomed in as a student.
I think all of you other employees at The ‘Croft have made the place as friendly, un-stuffy and comfortable as I can imagine, and I'll so much miss working here. Leaving here is almost more like graduation than graduation was, if that makes sense. Susan and Iris, thanks for being the greatest of supervisors from the beginning—and Lauren and Liz too. Susan, I'd say you've been my original Bancroft mentor: this all started because you hired me, plus you could whip me in any paging duel unless I properly drugged your lunch or paid someone to secretly re-file the carte de visites...
But this is for everyone, so I'll just say that I doubt I'll be around such an intelligent and cool building full of people in any other workplace. Besides the whole pleasure of worthy toil, I'll miss running into you all in the stacks, chatting at the circulation desk and on NRLF runs. Thanks, and good luck to you. It's been a great 4 years and it's making me as big and sentimental as a drunk.
Keep it real, Matt
Volume 121
Fall 2002
Table of Contents
The Wasp: Stinging Editorials and Political Cartoons
From the Director: A Bancroft Library for the 21st Century
Imagining Women's Work Bancroft Collections Contribute to Web-based Visual Culture
Undergraduate Research: A Brave New World
Fifty-Five and Counting! The Friends Annual Meeting, April 27, 2002
Scholars in the Making Graduate Student Instructors and History 101
"Permission to Drink Anything" Mark Twain's Letters to Eduard Pötzl
From the Regional Oral History Office Berkeley Anthropologists Have Their Say
The Bancroft Library Study Awards
William Penn Mott, Jr. Papers A Celebration
Email Farewell from a Graduating Student Employee
Donors to The Bancroft Library July 1, 2001 through June 30, 2002
