Introducing Our New Digital Collections Specialist

We are thrilled to announce our new Digital Collections Specialist, Vic Rocha. Vic was most recently a Library Shelver with the Seguin Public Library. They also recently received their MLIS with a concentration in Archival Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Tell us a bit about your background.

I graduated from UTSA in 2018 with my Bachelor’s in English and a minor in comparative literature. In 2020 I began my Master’s of Library and Information Science degree online at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and graduated in 2022 with a concentration in Archival Studies. I spent most of that time working in a public library where I got to see much of my graduate course work in action. Although I loved working in a public library, I found myself very excited by the courses focusing on academic librarianship and university archives.

What excites you about being the Digital Collections Specialist at UTSA?

I’m excited to be part of UTSA’s digital preservation journey. I believe the growth in the field will result in new and exciting things for the way we preserve the cultural history of our community. Assisting our Digital Archivist with our born-digital and physical collections in various stages of the collection’s life cycle will be a huge learning opportunity and a chance for me to contribute to our culturally rich community. Being part of such a driven and passionate team is also incredibly exciting and I’m looking forward to learning all I can from everyone! 

What’s your favorite thing about working with digital archives so far?

I’m having a lot of fun working with our digitization tools! I’ve spent a good chunk of my time working on our Zeutschel machine and I’m always looking for ways to improve our already amazing image quality. Spending extended time working with physical materials to digitize them gives me the opportunity to really examine the contents which lets me not only learn about the specific collection it belongs to, but also how it connects to our community. So far, my favorite project I’ve digitized and uploaded has been The Eagle Bone Whistle newspaper for our Pleas McNeel Papers collection.