Digital Curation Services (DCS) congratulates the graduating members of our student staff and thanks them for their contributions to successful digitization of numerous rare books, images, and manuscripts from the University of Virginia Library Special Collections:
- Sanchay Gupta, Computer Engineering
- Shannon Hees, Environmental Science and Economics
- Chelsea Kenney, Sociology
- Caitlin Secrist, Communication Disorders and Spanish
We asked them to share their thoughts about working in Digital Curation Services and to tell us about their future plans. Here’s what we learned:
Sanchay Gupta, who worked for DCS during the past academic year, will join the banking firm Capital One in July. He describes his initial experience with DCS as challenging: “There are a lot of small details that you have to focus on and make sure you are doing them before you can move on to the next step,” a common theme we heard. What Sanchay found most memorable was the amount of time it took to assure the best quality product for the customer. In his career he expects to see benefits from the attention to detail that he developed in the DCS, along with his increased patience.
Chelsea Kenney also spent the past academic year working in DCS, where she achieved her goal of working in a library. She enjoyed working with rare materials, including manuscripts and 16th century books. Chelsea views the DCS as a good technology learning opportunity and expects to apply some of these skills in her teaching career. First, though, she will spend the next year completing her Master of Education through Liberty University’s online program. With a special interest in middle school teaching, as a result of her recent internship in Philadelphia, Chelsea plans a career that begins in the classroom and leads to management as a principal and then school superintendent.
Caitlin Secrist has been with DCS for 2.5 years, 1.5 of which were as a student supervisor. She values the team approach, especially for thorough quality assurance. For Caitlin it is still exciting to see the new digitization projects: most memorable for her are Steinbeck’s manuscript for Grapes of Wrath, Borges’ poems with extensive doodles by the author, and an unpublished Faulkner manuscript. Through working with these she felt a connection with the authors and believes these opportunities are what keep the student staff engaged in the digitization process. Caitlin’s next step is graduate school in Speech-Language Pathology at University of Texas at Austin. Her summer in Ecuador at a school for the intellectually challenged stimulated her interest in early intervention through working closely with families.
Our best wishes to all!