VREPS Member Profile: Molly Schoen (VREPS Co-Chair)
Molly Schoen is an Information Resources Specialist in the Visual Resources Collections at University of Michigan—Ann Arbor’s Department of the History of Art. She studied English and Creative Writing at Michigan State University and went on to earn her MLIS from Wayne State University.
While at MSU, she worked in the Government Documents Library, which led her to pursue library school. She did not start out with the intent to become a Visual Resources Librarian, but Wayne State was offering a pilot specialty program, focusing in Fine & Performing Arts libraries. “The great thing with this program was that there were internships built into the curriculum,” she said, including partnerships with the Wayne State Library, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra Library, the Detroit Institute of Arts, and, her favorite, the Motown Museum. “I would intern at one place for 1-2 semesters, then switch.”
Although the Wayne State pilot program targeted work in Fine Arts, most of Molly’s professors never talked about visual resources management. She worked at the Wayne State VRC for a few weeks but said she was not fully aware of VR as a separate profession. Then, her first position out of school was as a Registrar / Librarian at the Mott-Warsh Collection, a private art collection in Flint, MI. “It was a fantastic organization,” she said, “A collection of modern and contemporary art by African Americans, based in Flint, and we’d install exhibitions at different sites around Flint—for example, churches and libraries—and also loan works out to national exhibitions.”
The position was only part-time, so she began volunteering at University of Michigan’s VRC, working under one of her former Wayne State professors, Kim Schroeder. As with all of the other VREPS interviewees, Molly emphasized the importance of mentorship in furthering her career. Kim, then-director of the VRC, and Marlene Gordon, VR Curator at UM-Dearborn and the Chapter Chair of VRA-Great Lakes, introduced Molly to VRA and encouraged her to attend the conference in Providence last year.
Attending her first VRA conference helped Molly feel a connection to her peers in visual resources. “I always felt my job at UM was so niche, and it always took me a few minutes to explain to my friends what exactly my work entailed,” she said. “So when I got to VRA, and there was a joke made about 2×2 cards, I thought, ‘Wow! These are my people!’” Like most of us new to the organization, Molly was also impressed with how friendly and accessible VRA members are. “What I like about VRA is that, since it’s not a huge organization, it’s easy to get involved and share ideas.”
Molly has stepped up this year to become the new VREPS co-chair as Heather Lowe steps down. As a fairly recent graduate, Molly hopes to help new and emerging professionals the way so many people helped her along the way. When I asked her how she thinks VREPS can do that, she said, “I think a lot of it is just getting the word out. When I worked at Wayne State’s VRC, I wasn’t really aware that it was a separate department. I didn’t know about the VRA.” And while many students want to go into art librarianship, not many know how to translate their MLIS degree to work in a broader art and visual resource field. “I was trying to use my MLIS to apply for museum jobs,” she said, “But even though I had museum experience, I didn’t get many interviews because I didn’t have the Museums Studies degree.”
She continued, “The great thing about VRA is that there are no set requirements: The position is a little different for anyone, so a profession in VR can be an option for anyone with a library, archives, or museum background, and it’s very closely related to the art library track, too. So I think if more students are made aware of it, they’ll be glad to know of other options available to them.” The more that students know about the kinds of work VR professionals do, the better they can prepare by finding appropriate internships and courses.
Speaking of internships, I asked Molly for her advice to current students: Predictably, she recommends interning and volunteering, and building a relationship with a mentor. “Also, even if you’re a new student,” she said, “Start looking at job postings. Save the ones you like, so you can see what experiences and skills you should have by graduation.” She added, “One thing I wish I would have done differently is to be more vocal at my internships. I wanted to get more involved but felt too intimidated to ask. Looking back, I should have asked. If you do it in a polite way, show genuine interest, and can bring your own ideas into the internship, most supervisors are pretty receptive.” Her final tip for students and recent graduates? “Apply, apply, apply. Once you’ve written a few cover letters, they become easier. Even if you don’t think you’ll get the job, there’s always that chance.”
Molly presented at VRA 32 in Milwaukee as part of the panel “The Teaching Turn: From Static Collections to Dynamic Learning Centers.” Her talk, “Promoting Visual Literacy Across Campus: a Case Study,” focused on revamping the VRC to better meet contemporary VR needs. To extend the collections’ reach, the VRC moved away from cataloging individual images at item level in favor of creating encoded finding aids as well as converting old finding aids to EAD, for which MLIS students from Wayne State were recruited. The VRC staff visits classrooms to promote visual literacy, collaborates with UM library staff, and works the Department of the History of Art (HART) marketing specialist to incorporate VRC information and announcements into the HART page. Her presentation slides will be uploaded to the VRA SlideShare site.
Molly is excited to get started in her new position as co-chair of VREPS, so be sure to get in touch with her with ideas and questions: schoenm@umich.edu.
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Marie Elia is the Processing Archivist in the Poetry Collection at the University at Buffalo Libraries. If you would like to participate in the profile series, please get in touch at eliam@buffalo.edu.
VREPS Member Profile: Kate Thornhill
Kate Thornhill is the Visual Resource Curator at Lesley University College of Art and Design Library in Boston, a position she calls ideal, a mix of her library and art interests. She earned a BFA and a BA in photography and Art History from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth before attending Simmons for her MLIS. She spent two years as the Senior Digital Assistant at the VRC at UMass Dartmouth, which helped her crystallize her path to a VR career.
“My junior year I was playing around with the idea of getting a masters in visual culture studies,” she says. “I saw myself gravitating more towards research instead of focusing on becoming a professional photographer. I am interested in everything, so focusing on one career was really hard for me.” Like many VR professionals, Kate was guided by a mentor, Allison Cywin, Director of the UMass Dartmouth Visual Resource Center. “I met her through the art history program, and when I started asking her what the VRC does, I thought, this is so awesome: It’s art history, photography, and research all in one thing. At the time I had no clue it related to library science and information management.”At the VRC, Kate quickly realized she liked building digital collections and helping people find images. “I thought, how do I turn this into a job? That’s when Allison said I should really look into an MLIS.” Kate completed a rigorous program at Simmons, including coursework in Digital Libraries, Web Development, Digital Stewardship, and Scientific Research Data Management. “Since completing grad school, all my professional interests have dovetailed,” Kate says, though VR management was not covered in her MLIS program, as is often the case. “I think VR gets lumped into digital humanities, digital initiatives, and digital curation studies.” Even though MLIS programs focus on metadata and digital collections creation and management, few programs specifically address how these disciplines are applicable to VR management.We revisited a topic that Jasmine and I had discussed, the MLIS as a companion degree: Deciding on a subject specialty and tailoring MLIS curriculum to that field. Kate hopes to take her targeted education further, with plans to earn a graduate computer science degree. “It would make digital assets management more streamlined and flexible, and help digital preservation practices. It would also open a lot of doors for working with open source programs and developing tools for VR,” because using open source software is often impractical without in-house IT staff to manage it.On a related note, we discussed how tech-savvy VRA members are, and how capable they are with respect to managing digital collections. Kate says, “It makes me wonder how much VR collaborates with ASIS&T and SAA because they do a lot so much with managing/preserving digital collections. I think there should be more collaboration between professional organizations because there are so many special interest groups focusing on DAM,” but many people are intimidated by working with their digital assets. “That’s where professional development should come in,” Kate says. “I’m a strong advocate for continuing professional development and doing research in the library, but it’s hard with limited budgets and finding a balance between work and life,” which is why she thinks professional organization membership is valuable. “I think it’s really important to be actively participating, maybe not necessarily serving on committees, but showing what you are doing and how you are solving problems because there are others trying to figure out the samethings.” Kate described how the VRA listserv helped her recently while working with IRIS. Through the listserv, Kate was able to connect with a Visual Resources Librarian at MIT. “She took time out of her day to sit with me for an hour just to learn some basics about IRIS. It was tremendously helpful!”Kate and the LUCAD library are currently making plans for a big move, relocating across the river to Cambridge. “The new library is going to be transformational for us,” Kate says, but it requires a massive overhaul of the collection, including a weeding project scheduled for summer 2014, and a deaccession project for the slide collection among other projects to be executed this summer. The slide collection currently consists of 50,000-60,000 slides, though 80% of the slide collection is in ARTstor. “Right now my team (2 student workers) and I are focusing on new media, graphic design, and illustration. We’re finding a lot of slides that aren’t in ARTstor but I have to be mindful of how much of the slide collection is kept because of limited space (for slides) in the new library. But, like many VR Curators, my goal for the future isn’t so much to focus on slides.”Kate has the opportunity and challenge to build the program from scratch. “I have a number of projects going on: research and instruction-based, DAM-based, and overall VRC vision- and mission-based.” But, as a relatively new curator, her main goal in her first year is to get to know her community. “I started by revamping the VRC’s digital image research LibGuide: http://research.lesley.edu/artimages. It’s going to be a continuous project (forever evolving) but some areas I’ve focused on building include digital image course specific guides and building a “special topics” in image research page. This is for non-art images because a lot of the questions I get from art students about images are not art based. I’ve also built an ARTstor help guide with some homegrown video tutorials along with a page dedicated to copyright and fair use.” This led us to a discussion about who uses the VRC, and Kate’s answer is that “Faculty, students, and staff do. It’s really great. This semester I have been working one-on-one with an instructor and students for a Fashion and Body Adornment class specifically focused on integrating visual and information literacy into studio art practice. Also, I’ve been addressing the elephants in the room: Google Images and Tumblr.Another project Kate is working on involves the Fenway Libraries Online consortium (a group of small/medium sized academic libraries) and DAM systems. “We are currently working on a Digital Repository Review, not just for VR but for all library and archive digital collections. This is one area I am very excited about because I have a strong interest and developing experience with managing research data and working with institutional repositories. I have a long term goal to start collecting student at LUCAD to deposit into our future IR. It’s going to take a lot of work since ultimately it’s an institutional effort, but I would love to develop arts research data management services for Lesley.”Kate believes that VR managers can be leaders in data management across disciplines. “We create and manage materials for digitization and similar concepts cross over for born-digital content. We understand the workflows for proper digital curation. For my final internship at Simmons, I ran a study at UMass Medical School with their Repository Librarian to assess biomedical PhD student research data needs. Along with this experience, library school, working in a VRC, and getting a degree in photography bells were ringing that research data management doesn’t only have a place in eScience. I see VR experts in tune with the repository management side and teaching data literacy skills. We are the ones who should support the visual arts community and developing their data management needs.”This flexibility and interdisciplinary knowledge base comes from the broad skill set that is required of VR managers. With this in mind, I asked Kate for her advice for students who want to get into VR. “Focusing on digital curation is going to be important, and thinking about how to help faculty and students manage their research or non-research digital collections. And look at the job ads! A lot of the classes I took were based on what jobs wanted, for example, hard skills like XML and XSLT.”And of course there are the internships: “My work experience at UMD, Tufts, Simmons, and UMass Medical School positioned me to have a lot of experience and projects under my belt to start at a job like the one I have now. I pretty much had no life for 2-3 years, haha.” But knowing where she wanted to be, looking at what current VR curators do as well as reading postings for new VR and digital initiatives positions helped her plan a curriculum. “I knew I wanted a job that would be in a field that’s only going to develop more. I think [MLIS education] is what you make of it. That’s the challenge: Knowing where you want to be.”Kate will be attending SEI this summer, so be sure to say hello!
VRA 2014 Conference presentations available
I'm please to announce more VRA32 conference presentations are now available on SlideShare.Session #6: Back to Basics — Cataloging Workflows and Solutionshttp://www.slideshare.net/VisResAssoc/vra-2014-backtobasicssmithhttp://www.slideshare.net/VisResAssoc/vra-2014-backtobasicselia-33044489http://www.slideshare.net/VisResAssoc/vra-2014-back-to-basics-fojas-whitehttp://www.slideshare.net/VisResAssoc/vra-2014-backtobasicssipeSession #11: Brave New World Cataloging: Using RDF and Linked Open Data for the Semantic Webhttp://www.slideshare.net/VisResAssoc/vra-2014-brave-new-world-cataloging-rosesandlerhttp://www.slideshare.net/VisResAssoc/vra-2014-brave-new-world-catalogingmixterhttp://www.slideshare.net/VisResAssoc/vra-2014-brave-new-world-cataloging-goodlanderhttp://www.slideshare.net/VisResAssoc/vra-2014-brave-new-world-cataloging-harpringThe Awards Presentation:http://www.slideshare.net/VisResAssoc/vra-awards-2014More presentations will be made available soon!JohnJohn M. TrendlerVRA PR&Cinfo@vraweb.org
VRA 2014 Conference presentations available
I'm pleased to announce the first batch of conference presentations are now available for viewing on SlideShare.Session 2, Case Studies in International Resources:http://www.slideshare.net/VisResAssoc/vra-2014-case-studies-in-international-resources-robinsonhttp://www.slideshare.net/VisResAssoc/vra-2014-casestudiesinternationalresourcesprudhommehttp://www.slideshare.net/VisResAssoc/vra-2014-casestudiesininternationalresourcesmaddenhttp://www.slideshare.net/VisResAssoc/vra-2014-case-studies-in-international-resourcesschulerSession 8, VRA Core 4 Unbound: Expanding Core capabilities through embedded metadata, APIs, and editors:http://www.slideshare.net/VisResAssoc/vra-2014-vra-core-unbound-reserhttp://www.slideshare.net/VisResAssoc/vra-2014-vra-core-unbound-rosesandlerhttp://www.slideshare.net/VisResAssoc/vra-2014-vra-core-unboundarnold20140313publicnovideoIn order to see speaker notes click on Notes from Slide 1 (below the presentation)if the session description is in the way you can click "show less" below the description to collapse it.More presentations will be made available soon!JohnJohn M. TrendlerVRA PR&Cinfo@vraweb.org
VREPS Second Member Profile
Our second VREPS member profile is Milwaukee-based Jasmine Burns. She has been helping with the local plans for VRA 32 and will be working the registration desk whenever she can. She will also be moderating the VREPS-organized Session 4, “The Teaching Turn: From Static Collections to Dynamic Learning Centers,” on Thursday, March 13, at 10:35 (sponsored by Scholars Resource).
Jasmine earned her MA in Art History from SUNY Binghamton while also serving as the Assistant Curator of Visual Resources there. She was a graduate student assistant for Marcia Focht (the VR Curator), who mentored Jasmine and gave her a lot of freedom and responsibility. She had the opportunity to work on major cataloging and digitization projects, including scanning and cataloging a slide collection of medieval images, which was particularly interesting as her academic focus was medieval art. As Jasmine began working on her MA thesis, she says that her research “veered away from looking at objects in their original cultural contexts and moved towards looking at them in their current archival and digital states.” During that time, she also received a Kress Foundation Travel Fellowship to attend the College Art Association’s THATCamp, a Pre-Conference Forum on Digital Art History. Things all came together in her thesis, “Digital Facsimiles and the Modern Viewer: Medieval Manuscripts and Archival Practice in the Age of New Media.”“I really got to dive into issues of access, preservation, and theories of materiality,” she says, which led her to apply to MLIS programs for archives. She is currently enrolled at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Archives/Archival Administration program. Although she was already qualified for VR jobs with an MA and her experience at Binghamton’s VRC, Jasmine says that fellow VRA members advised her to pursue the MLIS. “At the conference in Providence, I kept hearing people say get a library degree!” We discussed the MLIS as a companion degree for those who want to specialize in a narrower information management field, such as Visual Resources.Because she already has the art history background as well as hands-on experience, she can focus her coursework to better prepare her for a VR career. She specifically chose courses in electronic records management, digital libraries, preserving information media, and academic libraries, as well as a fieldwork course to gain more experience. She was just hired for an internship with the Digital Collections at the UWM library, where she will be working on a joint project with the American Geographical Society, digitizing and cataloging some of their materials for the online collection. “The AGS gets a lot of public inquiries,” she says, “so they are working to make their materials available online. I will be working with one other intern over the next year to scan a variety of materials, mostly manuscripts and written documents.”I asked Jasmine to talk a little more about her work at Binghamton. In addition to the VRC, she interned with the University Art Museum. “I worked with the director on a preservation project to take works on paper out of their frames and store them properly.” The director was new and taking the opportunity to reorganize, which include this four-month project to disassemble framed works on paper, most of which had been framed in the 1960s and were no longer housed in archivally-sound enclosures. Jasmine told me that the catalog for these items was handwritten in index cards, but that the museum was not yet ready to create an electronic catalog; however, the rehousing project helped gain more intellectual control over the materials. “I left it all ready to go!” she says.I switched gears a bit and asked Jasmine one of my Big Questions: What are her thoughts on how the profession will change (or need to change) in the next five years, especially given how much it has changed already? “I think the focus on digital imaging is going to continue to be a big deal. We are seeing more and more that these responsibilities are being merged with the already cumbersome load on VR curators.” She also believes that we need to be mindful of the long-term effects of digitization and digital preservation. “These issues are obviously being addressed in the literature, but how much are we actually applying in our everyday work? It will happen one day that we try to access an image, and the file format just does not exist anymore!” VRA focuses heavily on digital asset management, which we both agree will be absolutely necessary for successful VR management. Jasmine noted that, appropriately, most, if not all, of the VRA conference sessions have something to do with technology.On a related note, I asked her what kind of advice she has for current students and recent graduates. Jasmine is in a bit of a unique position as someone who has worked as a VR curator but is also a student. “What I see happening already, just from job searching, is that traditional VR curation is only a small portion of the job. Job postings call for someone with multiple degrees, and, more and more, specifically an MLIS.” She also notes that and there are so many job titles that encompass essentially the same position, such as project archivist, VR curator, digital collections librarian, and even art information professional. “It makes us seem like we are part of IT,” she jokes.But mostly, she advises students and recent graduates to get hands-on experience. “I never would have gotten this internship [with UWM Digital Collections] if I did not already know how to use the equipment. Plus there is only so much that you can learn in a classroom.” For example, her graduate assistantship with Marcia Focht at Binghamton led her directly to where she is now. Marcia, who at the time was the VRA secretary, encouraged Jasmine to attend the conference in Providence last year and to get involved with the community. “I am so happy I did,” says Jasmine. “Everyone is so nice, and they are genuinely interested in you and want to give you advice.”“I think it is definitely a niche field,” she continues, “And it might seem difficult to enter at first, and the amount of education required might be overwhelming, but just from attending the VRA conference and participating in the listerv, I realized that this is the community to which I belong.”
VRA 2014 Travel Award Recipients
The VRA Travel Awards Committee is pleased to announce the following recipients of Travel Awards for the 2014 VRA conference in Milwaukee:Kathe Hicks Albrecht Award -- Vicki Sipe, University of Maryland, Baltimore CountyNew Horizons Full Award -- Heather Lowe, California State University San BernardinoNew Horizons Full Award -- Maureen Burns, IMAGinED ConsultingScholars Resource -- Karen Kessel, Sonoma State UniversityGallery Systems -- Ana Cox, Phoenix Art MuseumNew Horizons Student Award -- Helenmary Sheridan, Northwestern University and student at University of Illinois Urbana-ChampaignRobert Tyler Kohl Memorial Award -- Amy Robinson, University for the Creative Arts (UCA)Luraine Tansey/VRA Travel Awards:International Award -- Sarah Butterill, OCAD UniversityMorgan Bell, University of WashingtonJasmine Burns, University of WisconsinMarie Elia, University at BuffaloJen Green, Plymouth State UniversityStephen Jennings, Harvard UniversityBrenda Lozano, Moraine Valley Community CollegeJenni Rodda, Institute of Fine Arts, NYUMolly Tighe, Mattress Factory and Pittsburgh Symphony OrchestraCongratulations to the award recipients, and thank you to all 44 applicants for their interest and excellent applications.Additional thanks go to contributors to the travel awards fund, our generous travel award sponsors, the VRA Executive Board and the Travel Awards Committee.We're looking forward to seeing all of you in Milwaukee,Vicky Brown and Amanda RybinCo-Chairs, Travel Awards Committee
VRA Core Website Receives a 4.5 out of 5 Rating from the Technical Services Quarterly
In a "Tech Services on the Web" review from the December 2013 issue of Technical Services Quarterly the VRA Core website received a rating of 4.5 out of 5. The review praised the website for providing "a veritable treasure trove of implementation examples, presentations, and other important information for those thinking of using or who have already implemented VRA."Eustis, J. (2013). Tech Services on the Web: Visual Resources Association's VRA Core; Eustis, J. (2013). Tech Services on the Web: Visual Resources Association's VRA Core; http://www.loc.gov/standards/VRAcore. Technical Services Quarterly, 30(4), 441-442.. Technical Services Quarterly, 30(4), 441-442.::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::VRA Core on the WebVRA Core Schemas and Documentation (Library of Congress Official Site)VRA Core Support Pages
VREPS Member Profile: Maggie Murphy
Welcome to the first of a series of profiles of VREPS members. You’re all out there doing such interesting work, and the VR community is a small one, so let’s get to know each other better! If you’d be willing to spend 30-45 minutes talking to me via Gchat or Skype (video or non-video), or if you’d like to write a profile of a fellow VREPS member, please get in touch with me at eliam@buffalo.edu.
I met Maggie Murphy at VRA in Providence last year, which she attended through a Scholars Resource Travel Award. This year, she served on the Travel Awards Committee. I knew she was working on some interesting projects, so I asked if I could interview her for the VREPS profile series.Maggie has been the Visual Resources Curator at Queens College, City University of New York, since August 2012, and is a member of VRA, ARLIS, the American Library Association (ALA), the METRO Library Council, and the Association for Information Science &Technology (ASIS&T).Her path to becoming a VR professional started during her undergraduate work at Sarah Lawrence College, where students design their own curriculum. Maggie’s included a seminar in art history and a studio workshop in printmaking. Her adviser was an art historian who encouraged her to apply for an internship with Cabinet Magazine, a quarterly arts and culture magazine. She researched images and located high-resolution versions for publication. “That was my first exposure to image archives like the NYPL Picture Collection,” she said, “and I thought that was really cool.”After the Cabinet internship, Maggie served as editorial assistant at the College Art Association’s Art Journal, where she worked more with image submissions and research. This background informed her experience earning an MLIS at Rutgers University’s School of Communication & Information, where she focused on metadata and digital libraries. As she was completing her MLIS program, a friend sent her the job posting for her current position. “Visual resources wasn’t a field that anyone ever described to me in library school,” she said, “but I looked at the description and thought, ‘I could totally do that job.’”Based on her own experience, I asked Maggie what advice she would give to a current student or recent graduate who is interested in a career in visual resources: “I would say that if they are interested in visual resources, they should definitely take classes or find internships that will expose them to a wide array of metadata schemas and standardized vocabularies, and the use of different digital library or collection management platforms. Visual resources will never be full-text searchable, so metadata and digital collection access will always be paramount in the profession.”I wanted to know more about how the students and faculty at Queens College use visual resources. Maggie told me that most of the students who are interested in visual resources are actually graphic design majors, and she works to connect them to resources within the collection and beyond. “I make sure to collect and promote information about archives that are releasing high-res images into the public domain for creative use (including commercial use),” she said. “Two recent ones that come to mind are the British Library, through Flickr Commons, and the Wellcome Library.” Students in the graphic design and studio art programs often seek out images for transformative use. “I think that’s a really interesting direction to take: A lot of images have been put into the public domain for that purpose.” She is particularly interested in creating collections of the artwork that these students produce and has started to document and collect the MFA and BFA thesis shows and materials.[At this point in the interview, we talked about Stephanie Beene’s great presentation about the Lewis & Clark College senior studio projects at VRA in Providence last year. If you missed it, you can see it on Slide Share here.]Maggie also provides on-demand scanning and image research for faculty for research and instructional use, but, she says, “often they will give me a box of slides to scan, and 60% of those images are available high-res online from the original source, museum or archive. So I really do collect a lot of resources from outside our collection. The truth is that most of the resources used to teach are undergraduate art history courses are readily available to faculty online, so I do work in assembling resources for our graduate courses, and I help faculty find resources for their own research.”One project she’s working on is a university-wide [CUNY-wide] visual resources consortium managed on the Shared Shelf platform, so that other departments that are interested in using the art department’s visual resources, such as English and history, can have access to them. “There are other CUNY schools, including Hunter College and the Graduate Center, that have been working with digital visual resources for years and years, and it doesn’t make sense for me to start any comprehensive digitization of our slides until I see what they have already scanned.”Finally, I asked what she sees as the value of belonging to professional organizations, like VRA. She described, how, particularly in the absence of a budget for her department, the VRA is valuable because it connects her with other professionals. “It gives me models for the direction that our visual resources collection can take. [The art department] didn’t digitize when a lot of people where digitizing, and now it seems like that might not be the most valuable thing for us to do because a lot of the resources the faculty use have been digitized already elsewhere. VRA gives me access to people on the forefront of the profession who are done digitizing slides, who are doing new innovative things in their positions, and gives me ideas of where I can take our collection now.”______________________________________________________________Marie Elia is the Processing Archivist in the Poetry Collection at the University at Buffalo Libraries.
VRA Core Copyright and Licensing Information Available
The licensing terms and conditions for using the VRA Core Schema and Documentation in software, computer applications, and publications are now available at: http://core.vraweb.org/pdfs/VRACoreLicensing.pdf.We are pleased to make the schema available under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::VRA Core on the WebVRA Core Schemas and Documentation (Library of Congress Official Site)VRA Core Support Pages
Travel Award Application - 2014 Conference in Milwaukee, WI
APPLY HEREThe Visual Resources Association offers several awards to assist member attendance at the VRA Annual Conference. Several Tansey Awards are offered each year along with Corporate Travel Awards, New Horizon awards, named individual donor awards, Top-Up awards and student awards. (Please see Types of Awards and announcements on VRA-L for more information.) Selection of recipients is determined by the Travel Awards Committee. The goal of the Travel Awards Program is to encourage and support conference attendance by both new members/conference attendees and veteran members/attendees.The Tansey Travel Award program was started in 1993 with initial funding by Luraine Tansey. She won the Distinguished Service Award that year and requested that her travel expenses reimbursement be used to assist other VRA members with their professional development. This became the seed of the fund, further supplemented when she sent in her first retirement checks (one from teaching art history, and another much smaller one from slide librarianship). The total was matched by the VRA and the Tansey Travel Award Fund was born. The Travel Award Committee, formed in 1993, presented the first five awards of $400 each to VRA attendees of the 1994 New York City conference.The Tansey awards are now funded through fundraising events, VRA member donations, and other VRA funds. Full Tansey awards are now up to $850 each; in addition there are Top-Up awards available up to $599 intended for applicants who have partial institutional funding, and awards for International members of $1,000. There are several corporate sponsors who have funded awards in the past (2013 sponsors were Archivision, Davis Art Images, Gallery Systems, and Saskia, Ltd.). The Travel Awards Committee is very grateful to all of these sponsors. For 2013, two anonymously donated New Horizons awards of $850 and a New Horizons student award of $300 were awarded. In addition, several individual VRA members have sponsored named awards, for example the Kathe Hicks Albrecht Award and the Joseph C. Taormina Memorial Award.The Travel Awards Committee especially encourages applications from new members/first time conference attendees, veteran members who have not had funds to attend conferences, international members, solo, isolated, and part-time VR professionals, students considering careers in visual resources, and any member actively participating in the conference who lacks sufficient funding to attend.Travel Award Recipients Since the Founding of the ProgramTravel Award InformationTravel Award Rules, Guidelines, and TipsAwards Committee
Digital Image Resources
Written by Molly Schoen80,000 digital images make for a sizeable collection. That’s how many we’ve got where I work, at the Visual Resources Collections at the University of Michigan. And while we try to cover the images needed for every class within our department (History of Art), there are bound to be gaps. It’s an impossible expectation for any singular image collection to have everything.Students and faculty alike are often flummoxed by the process of finding digital images. Undergraduates tend to be more prone to using sites such as Google Images, Flickr, and Wikimedia; these may be fine for quick reference, but not for searching for high quality images with accurate colors and trustworthy metadata. The problem with these websites is that anyone can edit or upload images, so there’s no stake in the accuracy of the works they represent.So, to help students, professors, and other art history buffs find the images they need, we provide handouts of online sources for digital images. The handout includes restricted access sites, where one typically needs an email address from a subscribing institution to enter, as well as sites freely available to the public. Additionally, as more and more museums are offering high resolution images on their websites, I’ve also started building a list of individual institutions that have searchable online collections.New digitization projects seem to sprout up all the time—this year has seen the advent of the Google Art Project and the Digital Public Library of America, among others—so this list is never finite. If I’ve missed any good sources, leave a comment below!handout revised vrepsRestricted Access CollectionsUniversity of Michigan, MImage CollectionsHistory of Art Collection –The University of Michigan Digital Library (UMDL) MImage Collections is composed of various image collections from across the UM campus. With over 500,000 available images, the Collections are divided into different subject areas, with cross-collection searching also possible.The History of Art collection is searchable by the faculty who have requested or submitted images (search for the professor’s uniqname to view results). It also contains images from other relevant digital image collections in the UM community, including the University of Michigan Art Museum.ARTstor:ARTstor is a digital library with over one million images of architecture, painting, sculpture, photography, and decorative arts from across nearly all cultures and time periods. The digital library is composed of images from museums, private collections, individual photographers, special collections, and photo archives. New image collections are added to ARTstor frequently. ARTstor is a good source for both canonical works and rare images.CAMIO – Catalog of Art Museum Images Online:CAMIO provides access to digital images of works from prominent museums in the US, Canada, and UK. CAMIO is built from museum photography and is not a comprehensive representation of a museum’s holdings. Strengths are in photographs, prints, drawings, and paintings.Oxford Art Online:The majority of articles in Oxford Art Online (formerly Grove Dictionary of Art Online) include links to relevant images. Image sizes can sometimes be small.Bridgeman Education:Bridgeman Education provides access to over 370,000 images from museums, galleries, private collections, and contemporary artists. Users can browse by movement, period, school, as well as subject matter: graphic design, conceptual themes, fashion, etc.Open Access WebsitesGoogle Art Project:A collaboration between Google and over 150 partner institutions from 40 countries, the Google Art Project provides a comprehensive catalog of high-quality images of art. From architecture to sculpture to painting to printed works, the 30,000 images represent nearly all time periods and cultures from the history of art. GAP also includes many interactive features, such as the ability to maintain your own image portfolios. This is a more reliable alterative to Google Images.University of Michigan Fine Arts Library:Various art-related research guides compiled by the Fine Arts library.Mother of All Art and Art History Pages: Compiled by the UM School of Art & Design, this is an extensive directory of links related to all things art- and art history-related. In addition to its vast array of research sources, this site also includes a directory of art colleges, associations, museums, and other institutions, making it a great resource for anyone working in the arts.Joconde: Portail des Collections des Musées de France:A composite database of object collections in French museums, Jaconde contains over 500,000+ records, and more than 275,000 accompanying digital images. It also contains separate collections for archaeology and ethnology.Europeana:Europeana is a portal to cross search 1,500 European cultural collections—museums, libraries, archives, and other institutions. Users can limit search results to images only and can also review results in timeline or map formats.Artcyclopedia.com:Artcyclopedia.com functions as an online database for over 2,000 art-related websites. Users are provided with lists of links for individual artists, art movements, subject matter, etc. Links vary widely from museum collections to commercial art poster websites.Web Gallery of Art:Web Gallery of Art is collection of approximately 20,000 images focusing on European painting and sculpture from the 12th-mid 19th centuries. Image sizes can sometimes be small.WorldImages:Resulting from the California State University IMAGE project, the WorldImages database contains approximately 100,000 images. The images include artistic works and monuments from throughout the world and other highly useful didactic material. The images are arranged by subject for easy browsing, as well as grouped into helpful portfolios for teaching survey classes.Digital Public Library of America:Launched in April 3013, the DPLA is an aggregate of online collections from leading museums and libraries nationwide. It features thousands of art images. Art Museum WebsitesThe following institutions offer extensive collections of digital images on their websites. Some even provide downloads of high resolution images. Rights and reproduction permissions will vary from museum to museum.The Rijksmuseum, Netherlands (313,000+ images)The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (260,000+ images)Harvard Art Museums (250,000+ images)Yale University Art Gallery (127,000+ images)The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC (25,000+ images)Los Angeles County Museum of Art (20,000+ images)The Getty, Los Angeles (4,600+ images)Walters Art Museum, BaltimoreOriginally posted: http://vreps.wordpress.com/2013/08/28/digital-image-resources/
VRA Bulletin v. 39, n.2, 2012
Open access to VRA Bulletin v. 39, n.2, 2012.The VRA Bulletin is the journal of the Visual Resources Association, an international association of image media professionals. The mission of the VRA Bulletin is to serve the membership of the VRA by providing a professional forum for the discussion and dissemination of ideas and information directly related the field of visual resources. It is a journal of professional practice documenting the research, ideas, projects, activities, and history of the Visual Resources Association as well as the broader work of information professionals in image management. Articles authored by members of the Association and like-minded information professionals from outside VRA, cover a wide range of topics including: digital imaging and digital projects; cataloging and classification systems; historical collections and archives; data standards; education and professional development; intellectual property rights and copyright; library automation; collection development; digital curation and preservation; visual literacy and instruction; and, professional standards and ethics.
32nd Annual Conference: Milwaukee
We are pleased to announce:The Visual Resources Association 32nd Annual ConferenceMilwaukee, WIMarch 12-15th, 2014Pfister HotelThe Executive Board recently went on a site visit and boy do they make Milwaukee look like fun! They visited the Harley Davidson Museum, The Milwaukee Art Museum and of course the Pfister Hotel where we hope to see you in March!View photos from the Executive Board's recent site visit.Please check back later in the year for more information: http://www.vraweb.org/conferences/vra32/
Summer Educational Institute
The Summer Educational Institute for Visual Resources and Image Management (SEI) is a joint project of the Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) and the Visual Resources Association Foundation (VRAF). As SEI marks its tenth year, its goal remains constant: to provide information professionals with a substantive educational and professional development opportunity focused on digital imaging, the information and experience needed to stay current in a rapidly changing field, and the opportunity to create a network of supportive colleagues. Past Institutes have been attended by professionals new to the image management field, those currently enrolled in library schools who wish to augment their experience with image management training, and more experienced professionals eager to update their skill sets in response to fast-changing technological advancements or increased job responsbilities. Each year's Institute has been very successful, and we look forward to continuing that tradition at SEI 2013.More info here: http://sei.vrafoundation.org/index.html
VRA Fair Use Statement
This Statement on the Fair Use of Images for Teaching, Research, and Study describes six uses of copyrighted still images that the Visual Resources Association (vraweb.org) believes fall within the U.S. doctrine of fair use. The six uses are: 1) preservation (storing images for repeated use in a teaching context and transferring images to new formats); 2) use of images for teaching purposes; 3) use of images (both large, high-resolution images and thumbnails) on course websites and in other online study materials; 4) adaptations of images for teaching and classroom work by students; 5) sharing images among educational and cultural institutions to facilitate teaching and study; and 6) reproduction of images in theses and dissertations.VRA Fair Use Statement (2013 PDF)
Introduction to VRA Core Webinar Hosted by NEDCC - 10/30/2013
October 30, 2013
Introduction to VRACore
12:30 pm Eastern (1 hr)$45Registration deadline: October 29, 2013Maximum class size: 95Class level: BeginnerInstructor: Frances Harrell, NEDCC Preservation SpecialistLocation: Live "Brown Bag" SessionThis live webinar offers a deeper exploration of VRACore, providing information on its history and uses, and resources for further investigation. Participants will become familiar with the VRACore element set for describing works of visual culture. Best practices for implementation will be covered as well. The webinar builds upon concepts discussed in the Introduction to Metadata webinar, but can be taken as a standalone course.
Logistics
45 Minute Session plus15 Minutes for QuestionsFor more information go here: http://www.nedcc.org/preservation-training/training-calendar::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::VRA Core on the WebVRA Core Schemas and Documentation (Library of Congress Official Site)VRA Core Support Pages
VRA Core 4.0 to Linked Data Conversion
Call for VREPS Participants, VRA Milwaukee 2014
Do you have an idea to present at a VREPS session during VRA 2014 Conference in Milwaukee?We’re looking for participants in two separate sessions, one about new directions for visual resource professionals and the other about transforming VRC into teaching and learning centers. Each of the sessions will have 3-4 speakers who will be expected to speak for about 15-20 minutes with time for questions and answers.After we hear from you we’ll propose the sessions for Milwaukee 2014. The deadline is July 15th!! We want to hear from interested participants by the 12th so we can put it all together!!What we need from you: Simply your name and the title/subject of your presentation Below are the descriptions of the two sessions:–Working Title: New Frontiers in Visual Resources ManagementAbstract:As the use of images to document and share becomes an increasingly vital component of many academic fields and professional arenas, new opportunities for professionals with visual resources skills are emerging in non-traditional environments. This session will explore the challenges, successes, and pitfalls of curating and managing images outside the traditional art history context. Case studies will discuss various image environments including commercial, academic, and non-profit environments.–Working Title: The Teaching Turn: From Static Collections to Dynamic Learning CentersAbstract:Much of the business of creating and disseminating images has moved away from individual academic departments and isolated image collections toward centralized cross-discipline departments. This has left many visual resource centers looking for new ways to engage users and support the educational goals of their institutions. One way centers are meeting these new challenges is by transforming from being a storage silo for physical slide collections to being a collaborative learning space where students and faculty alike can come to work on projects and refine imaging and videography skills. As many resource centers make this move toward more teaching and learning, the physical spaces and skill sets of employees have also shifted. This session will examine case studies of visual resource centers programming that is directed to teaching imaging skills and how this new role is shifting their profile within their institutions. If you have questions or a proposal idea contact Anna Bernhard at anna.bernhard@colostate.edu or Heather Lowe at HLowe@csusb.edu
VRA Forms Advisory Group for the VRA Core
The VRA Board has appointed the following individuals to serve two-year terms in the Advisory Group to the VRA Core Oversight Committee.(April 2012/April 2014):
- Johanna Bauman, Pratt Institute (Co-Chair)
- Trish Rose-Sandler, Data Analyst, Center for Biodiversity Informatics, Missouri Botanical Garden (Co-Chair)
- Esme Cowles, Software Engineer, UC San Diego Libraries
- Rob Detlefs, Director, Strategic Initiatives at Gallery Systems
- Rebecca Guenther, Metadata Specialist at Rebecca Guenther Consulting, (formerly Senior Networking and Standards Specialist at Library of Congress (LC)
- Elisa Lanzi, Director of Imaging Center, Smith College
- Kelcy Shepherd, Head of Digital Programs, Amherst College
- Dustin Wees, Director of Metadata and Cataloging, ARTstor\
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VRA Core Survey Analysis Now Available
An analysis of the VRA Core Survey which was conducted from February-March of 2010 is now available. This analysis gives insight into the needs of current and potential users of the VRA Core and will help guide its future direction.Link to Survey Results.::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::VRA Core on the WebVRA Core Schemas and Documentation (Library of Congress Official Site)VRA Core Support Pages