UTA Libraries Staff Spotlight: Vanessa Garrett

Stepping inside Vanessa Garrett's office at UTA Libraries, a smile is the first thing that greets you, followed by a willingness to help with any problem, concern or question.  

Vanessa serves as the digital publishing librarian here at the library, where she manages the Institutional Repository for the Research Commons. This database contains more than 28,000 items that range from images, theses, dissertations, papers, journal articles and research from professors.  

"You don't need a subscription or anything to access the Institutional Repository. Anything that goes in there is open for anyone to use in their research as well," Vanessa said. "One of the community of collections in it from J.C. Henry, and it has to do with architecture. It has more than 10,000 images." 

A few people who published their work in the 1980s contacted Venessa to see if the library could digitize their physical copies so that others could use them. Once the library received the physical documents, they were scanned into the Institutional Repository. She also helps students and faculty members publish their items through the libraries' open-access journals. 

Before coming to the university, Vanessa worked for Salem Author Services, a self-publishing company. Those skills in working with authors on editing and marketing have helped her here at UTA.  

While she enjoyed her time at Salem, she desired to return to an academic setting, working on a college campus with students. 

"I was looking for different academic jobs," she said. "I saw this one, which seemed like such a good fit because it was working within a university, but it was still working in publishing." 

Outside of work, Vanessa enjoys exploring the Arlington community with her black Labrador Retriever, Beau, visiting different parks. She shared that Beau has quite a personality and can sometimes be very needy. 

"When I adopted him, his name was Bubba. I wanted to keep a B-Name because he was used to that, but I didn't want to stick with that," she said. "I tried a couple of names out, and Beau was the one that kind of stuck; Bubba did seem like it fit him." 

Vanessa also loves K-Pop, and her interest grew during the pandemic. 

"BTS was the group that was a gateway into that world. They were the only group that was mainstream enough to the general public," Vanessa said. "During the pandemic, I had a lot of time on my hands, and they have a ton of content, like YouTube videos and Instagram. I did a deep dive into that, and that opened me up to this is a whole industry." 

Vanessa added that she shares this interest with fellow library staff member Jessica McClean. They regularly have discussions about the music and have even seen a K-pop concert together.  

Since joining the staff at UTA Libraries in April, Vanessa feels she has made the right move in coming to the university. 

We could not agree more. We are happy to have you on our team here at the library. Welcome aboard.