VRA Spotlight: VREPS

VRA Spotlight: VREPS (Visual Resources Emerging Professionals and Students Group)October 14, Wed, 2-3 pm ESTZoom meetingVREPS is committed to the dissemination and promotion of employment, professional development, and networking opportunities specific to the needs of new professionals and students. New to the visual resources professional field? Seasoned professional looking to share your wisdom or collaborate with up-and-comers? Come to this session to meet with other students and early-career professionals and learn what this active group is doing on behalf of the VRA (and what we can do for you!).Email info@vraweb.org for the Zoom link or find it on the MyVRA Calendar.

VRA Webinar: Incorporating Diversity in our Workplace

Registration is still open for the Friday, June 12, 3:00-4:30 pm EST, VRA Webinar Incorporating Diversity in our Workplace. Originally part of the Baltimore conference program, this session has been moved online. It is free of charge to members and non-members, although advanced registration is required. Please sign up using the MyVRA link. Your confirmation email will include information on how to access the Zoom webinar. Contact tech@vraweb.org with any technology concerns.We hope that you can join us! Please forward to your colleagues or anyone else who may be interested in learning more about VRA and the work of its members.Friday, June 12, 2020Incorporating Diversity in our Workplace: All are Welcome, but How Do We Get There?3:00pm - 4:30 pm ESTRegister: vra.memberclicks.net/vrawebinar_0612#/Moderator: Andrew WangPresenters: Heidi Raatz, Cindy Frank, Meghan RubensteinWebinar Description: As keepers of information in the art, architecture and other cultural heritage fields, we need to be mindful of all the cultures represented in our world. This is apparent in the art that is created and in the various bodies that study it and care for it. As Visual Resources professionals we have the opportunity to respect and celebrate all the diversity that all these cultures represent. At the local level this may mean adjusting our hiring practices. It may mean exploring the way we catalog the work of art and the artist or architect, so that a student can find the representative of themselves in the collection. At the institution level, it may mean formalizing the hiring practices of an equitable process, or training to be aware of microagressions. This session proposes to share direct experiences and then enter a discussion with session attendees to share ideas. We intend to present on the topics of recruiting and hiring a diverse group of student employees and how this creates a dynamic work environment and welcoming public center. We intend to discuss how museums and cultural heritage organizations can develop ethical and respectful methods of collecting, standardizing, and expressing artist/creator data as part of a larger ethical and empathetic practice, and how museums can use artist/creator data to convey factors such as experience, personal identity, environment and status.How can cultural heritage organizations develop ethical methods of collection, standardizing and expressing artist/creator data as part of a larger ethical and empathetic practice? How can we adjust our hiring practices to reach new audiences? How do we remove the “white male” filter from an image search?

Reminder: VRA Webinar Managing Rights Data

Registration is still open for the June 2, 12:00-1:30 pm EST, VRA Webinar Managing Rights Data. Originally part of the Baltimore conference program, this session has been moved online. It is free of charge to members and non-members, although advanced registration is required. Please sign up using the MyVRA link. Your confirmation email will include information on how to access the Zoom webinar. Contact tech@vraweb.org with any technology concerns.We hope that you can join us! Please forward to your colleagues or anyone else who may be interested in learning more about VRA and the work of its members.---Tuesday, June 2, 2020Managing Rights Data12:00pm - 1:30 pm ESTRegister: vra.memberclicks.net/vrawebinar_0602#/Moderator: Chelsea StonePresenters: Douglas McCarthy, Heidi Raatz, and Summer ShetenhelmWebinar Description: Managing rights data is an institutional choice that affects collections access and use. How we choose to present and share our collections changes directly affects how our audiences and community of users can interact with our collections. Conveying that rights data information to our users creates a unique lens through which to view intellectual property rights. Rights data can serve the end users to the extent that they have access to the content, generally understand how they are allowed to use the digital objects for what specified purposes, and enlighten them about the rights held in the underlying content for which they may still be responsible. What are the implications of our rights data management decisions on our collections and our users? What are some of the ways that various institutions have decided to manage their collections and rights data? The RightsStatements.org standard offers a powerful standardization tool: a system of standardized interoperable rights and reuse information under the guidance of an international member based consortium. Open access or "no rights reserved" CC0 dedication grants more freedom to our users and visibility to our collections though it may leave unanswered questions about underlying rights. And what are the ethical and policy issues surrounding reproduction licensing of works in the public domain? Four institutions will discuss how they approach managing data rights data at their institutions from both policy and technical implementation perspectives.Should ethical issues be considered when making decisions regarding managing rights data? Do you think standardization, for example, using Creative Commons licenses or RightsStatements.org standard statements, is important? Is rights data transparency a valuable ethos when working with patrons?Douglas McCarthy What principles do we need for open access to cultural heritage?The forthcoming Declaration on Open Access to Cultural Heritage is a major initiative that seeks to support and inform accurate and culturally appropriate practices for the licensing of digitized public domain works. Douglas will present the context, purpose and approach of the community developing the Declaration, seeking to raise awareness and elicit engagement with VRA conference delegates.Heidi Raatz Mia & RightsStatements.org: a user-centered data standard for managing rights informationThe Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) recently implemented the RightsStatements.org standardized rights statements for online cultural heritage, aiming to clarify what website users can do with the art images Mia shares. RightsStatements.org provides a standard set of user-friendly statements in three main rights categories: In Copyright, No Copyright, and Other. The RightsStatements.org standard aids Mia’s mission to make accessible outstanding works of art from the world’s diverse cultures and helps users engage with cultural heritage online.Following a brief introduction to the standard, Heidi will share how Mia uses the RightsStatements.org statements to communicate more effectively and clearly what we know about the copyright and reuse status of our art collection images, touching on the standards’ benefits and challenges.Summer Shetenhelm Copyright Statements in Plains to Peaks Collective Digital CollectionsAmbiguities about copyright status of digitized resources limit users’ understanding of what can or cannot be done with these resources. This paper seeks to answer the following questions: what rights statements are included in Colorado/Wyoming regional records that have been ingested by DPLA, what rights statements are included for public domain objects, and what creation date information is included in these records? This study hopes to shed light on the state of rights representation in digital collections in the greater Colorado area.