VRA LA 2019: Spotlight on Tuesday Workshops

Hello everyone!

We are now a little more than two months away from the start of VRA 2019 in Los Angeles. As part of the countdown to the conference I wanted to share the details of the three great workshops that are on the schedule for the morning of Tuesday, March 26th.

• Clean, Transform and Enhance Your Data – Getting Started with OpenRefine
  Spend less time editing more records while improving the quality of your data using OpenRefine (http://openrefine.org/), an open source program that offers a practical approach to efficiently clean and transform data. Data comes from multiple sources and is messy. Cleaning data takes time, and is challenging when staffing and resources are limited. In this workshop, you will be given an overview of the program, learn how to analyze your data, and transform it with text faceting, filtering, clustering, and using GREL (General Refine Expression Language) expressions that will allow you to write code to further manipulate data.
  
  One of OpenRefine's most advanced features is the reconciliation service which allows you to connect to Linked Open Data (LOD) on the Web and enrich your data with additional information (Wikidata, Getty vocabularies, LCSH and LCNAF, VIAF, and more).  Use of the built-in Wikidata reconciliation service will be demonstrated in a pre-recorded video by Samantha Norling (Digital Collections Manager, Newfields).
  
  Participants will need to bring a laptop to follow along with the exercises. Instructions on how to download and install OpenRefine, data sets, and additional documentation, will be emailed to you prior to the workshop.
  
  
• Lesson Planning for Fair Use and Visual Literacy
  The open access e-book Fair Use in the Visual Arts: Lesson Plans for Librarians (ARLIS/NA Occasional Paper No. 17, 2018) builds off of the CAA Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Artsto guide art information professionals in designing and delivering active learning experiences that empower students to understand copyright and take advantage of fair use in their art, design, and academic practices. This workshop, featuring instructor Dani Brecher Cook (Director of Teaching & Learning, Library, University of California, Riverside), will introduce art information professionals to frameworks and best practices for user instruction and equip them with tools and strategies to teach fair use in their own institutions. The workshop will give attendees an understanding of fair use and other visual literacy issues and how to integrate them into library instruction.
  
  
• The Only Thing to Fear is Fear Itself: Public Speaking for Introverts and Other Reluctant Presenters
  Many of us have a fear of public speaking that prevents us from sharing our great ideas and experience, and even those who speak frequently admit that getting up in front of a room can still induce trembling hands and sweaty palms. While useless tips like imagining your audience in their underwear to banish nerves abound, in truth simple steps can be taken to help you survive and even thrive before a crowd. Betha Whitlow, in a highly supportive and interactive environment, will lead workshop participants in an exploration of the causes (and even potential benefits!) of stage fright, and discuss how to mitigate it through mindfulness and other stress reduction techniques, the fear minimizing power of a well-crafted talk, and cover other techniques for public speaking. After taking this workshop, you may still not actively court the limelight. But you will have the tools--and ideally newfound confidence--to transition from perpetual audience member to speaker on the stage.

These workshops only have a limited amount of seats available, so register for the conference soon! If you have any questions please feel free to contact me.

Contributor:
Jacob Esselstrom
Vice President for Conference Program, VRA Executive Board