July 2024 - VRA Board Buzz

Hi there—Happy Summer! I hope you have a fantastic summer that's just right—not too hot, rainy, or dry. 

Is now a good time to reflect on why you joined VRA? I joined to learn more about the field and to develop useful skills. To achieve that goal, I joined committees. VRA has about 10 committees and special interests groups, covering quite a few areas, and the details are here. 

I joined the VRA Core Oversight Committee, now merged into Cataloging and Metadata Standard Committee (CaMS), because I was interested in knowing more about VRA Core, the metadata structure standard developed by this very community back in 1996. In its fourth version, VRA Core is an internationally recognized metadata standard for describing works of visual culture and their surrogates, the media files created through digitization to represent the works in the digital realm. For decades, VRA Core has been integrated into schemes and tools to record cultural objects and related media files. The primary document, VRA Core 4.0 Element Description and Tagging Examples was first made available in English, followed by Italian, Greek and Chinese. 

Another metadata standard developed by this community and published in 2006 is Cataloging Cultural Objects (CCO). Also internationally recognized, CCO guides the creation of record field content for cultural artifacts, such as those in visual culture. VRA Core and CCO complement each other: VRA Core provides guidance on the overall metadata schema, including which fields to include in cataloging environments and the sources of controlled vocabularies for some fields, while CCO focuses on specific tasks, such as forming titles when they are unknown and handling unknown creators. Though they work marvelously together, VRA Core and CCO can also be applied individually when developing or modifying metadata guidelines for specific projects.

Now, 28 years after the first version of VRA Core was released and 18 years since CCO was published, two sub-committees at CaMS are working parallelly to expand and update both VRA Core and CCO. Isn't that exciting? 

The work began a year ago, and this year, both sub-committees have made significant progress. VRA Core subcommittee have completed the review of VRA Core, identifying areas for expansion to enhance accessibility features, facilitate geographic location tagging and multiple language support. The VRA Core 5.0 draft scheme is coming out, potentially, for the community review before it is finalized. CCO, being a much larger document, requires more time to review, and the focus is to identify the areas that should be updated in response to widely-adopted cataloging approaches and newly established practices in critique cataloging. Preliminary planning has been done and the review is in process at a steady speed. The two subcommittees are currently discussing how to present the upcoming updates in an intuitive manner. At the same time, they are considering applying for major grants to cover expenses on  professionals and services if needed. 

If you want to join them, it’s not too late! The CCO subcommittee especially needs more participants. CaMS sent out emails to ask for volunteers last Friday. Feel free to approach CaMS now for this opportunity. Please contact the whole committee at vra-cams@googlegroups.com. Use “CCO Review Volunteer” as the Subject Line. 

Joining the committee is a fantastic opportunity to develop new skills, expand your network, and contribute to something bigger than yourself. In this case, you'll not only become more familiar with established metadata standards, but also play a key role in integrating the latest advancements of many fields into these standards, benefiting users worldwide. 

BTW, CaMS will have a new co-chair -- Grant Mandarino. Grant currently works for Providence Archives in Seattle as Visual Resources Archivist. He holds an MLIS from Simmons University and a PhD in Art History from the University of MIchigan. Starting August, he will work with CaMS’ long-term chair Leah Constatine to co-lead CaMS starting August. Leah has led CaMS solely for a few years. She has not only established effective communication within the committee but has also sustained major initiatives and facilitated the committee's growth. Kudos to Leah! As Leah transitions to the role of co-chair and later a committee member, Grant and Leah are now actively recruiting another co-chair to begin in 2025. Another opportunity knocks! :)

Best,

Xiaoli Ma

President

Visual Resources Association

VRA Happenings & Reminders

VRA 2024 Annual Conference Registration is Open Now!

The conference will be held October 8–10, 2024, at the Embassy Suites in the heart of downtown Minneapolis, MN. VRA 2024 follows a single-track hybrid conference model. Register now to take advantage of reduced Early Bird registration rates. Check out the conference website for more information. The program is available on Sched, with full descriptions of each session.

VRA Awards Nominations Open until July 26th

The VRA Awards Committee is seeking nominations for the 2024 Distinguished Service Award and the Nancy DeLaurier Award. These awards exist to honor outstanding efforts and people in visual resources that may otherwise go unrecognized. The dossiers for the Awards are due by Friday, July 26th, and should be sent to: vra.awards@gmail.com.

VRA Bulletin 50th Anniversary Edition Out Now!

The 50th Anniversary Edition of the VRA Bulletin (VRAB) is now available. This special edition celebrates 50 years of VRAB and all of the editors, advisors, and authors who have contributed to its legacy. 

VRA Regional Workshop Season

The VRA is pleased to announce its 2024 Workshop Season! Check out the full schedule here. If you have any questions, please send an email to the Regional Workshop Implementation Team at vraf.rwit@gmail.com.

New for this season: VRA members will receive a nearly 25% discount on all of our workshop registration fees! For online workshops, the VRA member rate is $50 and the non-member rate is $65.