Amy Vilz
Death: 2021Amy Vilz discovered her love of the archival field while working as a graduate student assistant in the University at Buffalo's University Archives. After earning a Master of Library Science degree from UB in 2006, she held archival positions at the Rochester Institute of Technology, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and D'Youville College. Vilz returned to the University Archives in 2013 as University Archivist, a position she held until her death in 2021.
Amy Vilz believed that today's archivist should do everything possible to inform the future archivists on why and how things were done in the University Archives. To this end, she instituted internal procedures and guidelines for the intake of new collections, the creation of finding aids, the addition of information to databases and more. Under Vilz, the University Archives began using ArchivesSpace to manage the inventory of collections, donation records and the creation of online finding aids.
Throughout Amy Vilz's term as University Archivist, digitization of existing University Archives collections and the intake of born-digital collections became increasingly important. Vilz sought out and received funding for the digitization of the University Archives' large collections of film and reel-to-reel audio recordings. She was also a strong proponent for the creation of the Digital Archivist position, knowing that a specialist would be needed to manage digital collections for all of Special Collections.
- Sources:
- Amy J. Vilz obituary, March 2021.
- Offhaus, William. "History of the University Archives, 1964-2023."
Affiliation(s): Libraries
Record Group(s): 13
Biographical File Contains:
- Obituary