Digitorium 2019 University of Alabama Digital Humanities Conference Where: Tuscaloosa, AL When: October 10-12, 2019 Learn More
Conservation center for Art & Historic Artifacts Conference Theme: Off the Shelf: Access and Preservation in Libraries and Archives Where: Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis, IN When: October 22-23, 2019 Learn More
Digital Frontiers Where: University of Texas at Austin When: September 26-28, 2019 Learn More & Register
ACRL/NY – Call for Posters Theme: Outside the Box: Redefining Ethical Innovation in the Academic Library Where: Baruch College, City University of New York (CUNY) When: Friday, December 6, 2019 Deadline to submit a poster: Sept. 15, 2019 Submit a poster idea here!
DH2020 (Digital Humanities) Conference Theme: carrefours/intersections Where: Ottawa, Canada When: July 22-24, 20202 Deadline to submit a proposal: October 15, 2019 Submit a proposal & learn more!
#LISMeditationDay, an online campaign to encourage 5 minutes or more of meditation in libraries worldwide, will take place on September 12, 2019. Here is an invitation to join in either or both of the live practices that I will be leading on the day of the event:
The Newberry Library’s Center for Renaissance Studies proudly launches a new digital resource devoted to Italian paleography, sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Paleography, the study of the history of handwriting and scripts in books, manuscripts, and other documents, is essential for scholarly research in the humanities for the premodern period. Created and edited by Isabella Magni (Newberry Library), Lia Markey (Newberry Library), and Maddalena Signorini (Università di Roma-Tor Vergata) in collaboration with the University of Toronto Libraries Information Technology Services and the Walter J. Ong S.J. Center for Digital Humanities at St. Louis University, this new website provides pedagogical tools for the study of Italian vernacular handwriting from 1100 to 1700 using manuscripts in the Newberry collections as well as other US institutions.
The Omohundro Institute is pleased to offer fellowships for scholars at all levels working in partnership with special collections libraries and historical societies. The Fellowships for Digital Collections are part of the Lapidus Initiative. In concert with other Omohundro Institute projects promoting creative use of digital tools and materials, these fellowships are intended to bring scholars and collections specialists together to make collections available for digital scholarship.
The fellowship awards up to $5,000 to the holding library and to the scholar whose research relies on, or will be greatly enhanced by, the digitization of a collection or partial collection of materials related to early America, broadly conceived, before 1820. Scholars must partner with special collections libraries that will digitize the needed materials with the funds from the fellowship.
For the purposes of the application, digitization should be considered broadly. It may include (but is not limited to): the photographing of manuscripts, newspapers, graphic materials, or rare books; the scanning of index cards; the cataloging of rare materials; the enhancement of digital catalog records; or the inventorying of manuscript collections. We welcome project proposals employing materials from libraries and archives of all sizes. If you have questions about this program or the application process, including how to construct a detailed budget, please contact Martha Howard at martha.howard@wm.edu
Required Files for the Digital Collections Fellowship application
Project Description, including the nature of the research project, how the digitization of the collection is crucial to the research, a summary of any additional funding for the project, the scholar’s projected outcome of the work with the digitized materials, and how other scholars might benefit from the digitization of the collection (500 words maximum)
c.v. (2 pages maximum)
A timeline for completion of the digitization project
A letter of commitment to digitize from the librarian, curator or other representative of the special collection should the award be granted. This letter must include: An itemized budget of the cost of digitization, including staff time.
A summary of any other funding received for the project.
A point of contact for any questions the committee may have.
Recognition of the application’s timeline for completion of the project and commitment to complete the digitization within the scholar’s timeline.
Commitment either to host the digitized material or make it available elsewhere for public access. N.B.: If the materials are under license to a vendor, the letter should also explain that the library has permission to reproduce and make available these materials.
An itemized budget that includes both the special collection’s budget as well as the scholar’s travel and research fees
Upon completion of digitization, the materials must be made publicly available.
Library Juice Academy Course: Introduction to GIS and GeoWeb Technologies When: May 6th – 31st, 2019 Price: $175 Learn More & Register
NDSR ART Topic: Strategies for Conserving Time-Based Media: An overview of the Art Institute of Chicago’s TBM Initiative When: May 8, 2019 at 12pm CST Learn more & Register **A recording of the webinar will also be made available on the ARLIS/NA Learning Portal.
International Visual Literacy Association – Annual Conference Call for Proposals Where: Leuven, Belgium When: October 16-19, 2019 Deadline: Tuesday, April 30, 2019 Submit a Proposal
NEDCC (Northeast Document Conservation Center) Workshop: Digital Directions: Fundamentals of Creating and Managing Digital Collections Where: Overland Park, KS When: August 19-20, 2019 *Scholarships available for Kansas Residents Learn More & Register
Awards, Scholarships, and $$$
VRA Foundation – Project Grant A single grant is available during the spring 2019 cycle with up to $3000 to be awarded. Deadline: April 26, 2019 Apply Here
California Rare Book School Scholarship Deadline: Friday, June 7th, 2019 A limited number of scholarship awards are available to librarians, archivists, scholars, booksellers, collectors, graduate students, and others. All course applicants are eligible to apply. A scholarship award provides a tuition waiver for one CalRBS course. The recipient is responsible for any other expenses related to the acceptance of the scholarship and attendance at CalRBS. Select CalRBS scholarships offer support to help cover the cost of attendance (lodging, airfare, meals, etc.). Apply Here
Check back next Thursday for more Happenings! Missed a week? Take a look at previous happenings here. Don’t forget to subscribe to VRA’s weekly Job Digest, here!
The National Digital Stewardship Residency for Art Information capstone event, The Art of Digital Stewardship, is accepting proposals for lightning talks from the community. Lightning talk sessions will present a contribution, project, or theme related to the use of technology in art, digital preservation, digital archives, digital curation, or any topic related to the intersection of art and art information, particularly as it relates to digital media. This call for proposals is open to artists, students, educators, content creators, curators, archivists, and/or librarians.
As the culminating event for the National Digital Stewardship Residency for Art Information (NDSR Art), the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) will host The Art of Digital Stewardship: Content, Context, and Structure. During this symposium, NDSR Art residents from MICA’s Decker Library, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago and Small Data Industries will present possible solutions for the acquisition, preservation, and access of digital art and art information, from preserving born-digital documentation of the museum experience to working with at-risk artists’ archives.
In addition, this one-day symposium will bring together digital archivists, digital curators, librarians, content creators, and artists to discuss digital art stewardship and focus on questions such as:
How are we conceptualizing the artistic process as information/ or as a record?
How can we support artists’ engagement with the archival record?
And, conversely, how can we support artists’ archival impulses?
Can you tell us a little bit about your background, your current position and how you got into the field of visual resources? I was also interested in gems and jewelry, so once I left the L.A. Times, I enrolled in the graduate gemologist program at the Gemological Institute of America (GIA). After graduating, I worked briefly at a jewelry manufacturer and saw there was an opening for a slide librarian at GIA. I thought I was a good fit, combining my photo and gemology backgrounds. Evidently, GIA thought so too and I was hired. I’ve been at GIA for 23 years and my current title is Manager of Visual Resources. We made the transition from slides to digital images starting in 1999. By 2004, we had a sophisticated digital asset management system in place. At one time, I managed a staff of four, but the department was divided and now I oversee two visual resources staff.
What is your favorite part about your work? Can you describe any project(s) you’re currently working on? Viewing images of spectacular gems and jewelry is always a treat. I also get to see the real deal quite often. I have been asked to write articles recently and I enjoy researching and finding images through various sources to accompany them. I’ve written a lengthier article about a prominent Beverly Hills jeweler (yet to be published) which involved a lot of research and interviews. That was fun.
What does a typical work day look like for you? I go through email messages to see if there are any requests that have come in for image research or licensing. I either take care of them myself or delegate to another staff member. Part of my duties involves spending time on the reference desk of the GIA library. We’re a closed stack library so I help students with book recommendations and checkout. I also answer reference questions related to gems and jewelry from the jewelry trade and the public. After my reference duties, I work on short articles for a web-based pilot project for GIA alumni.
What were some challenges you came across when you first started out in the field of visual resources? A big challenge for me when I first started as a slide librarian at GIA was trying to keep up with all the work involved as a one-person department. I was able to get work-study students to help out for a while and then slowly added more staff as the workload and demands grew.
What skills do you use for your job that you didn’t learn while in school? Managing staff. I’ve been in managerial positions for the greater part of my working career and it’s never been my favorite part of the job. I never wanted to be in management, but I always end up in that position.
Looking back, what accomplishments are you most proud of? I’m proud of being part of the planning stages of our DAM system (a two-year organization-wide effort) and building it up and gaining user acceptance. I’m also proud of obtaining a professional certificate in intellectual property which involved 215 hours of instruction through UCSD’s extension program.
What is something that most excites you about the field of visual resources? The variety of photographic resources that are available online now. It’s great to see so much available now that wasn’t accessible just a few years ago.
Where else do you seek professional development opportunities other than VRA? Jewelry history conference and antique jewelry trade shows.
Can you tell us a little bit about your background, your current position and how you got into the field of visual resources? Be sure to find a job that is related to interests you’re passionate about, or at least enjoy. There may be parts of the job you don’t enjoy, but if the subject matter interests you, then it makes it a lot easier to do the job. Also, find an organization, company or school that you admire and would be happy to work at.
What are some of your favorite things outside of work? What are some of your hobbies? Movies, theater, art, food and wine, my dog
Reach out to Judy at 📧jcolbert@gia.edu
Feeling a bit overwhelmed or suffering from imposter syndrome in the Visual Resources field? Sign up to be a mentee in the VRA’s Year-round Mentorship Program! Learn more: http://vraweb.org/opportunities/mentorship/ or connect with other VREPS on Slack!
Can you tell us a little bit about your background, your current position and how you got into the field of visual resources? I began working in the field of ‘visual resources’ as an Art History undergrad at West Virginia University. I was given a scholarship that entailed working in the Slide Library at WVU. At that time, in the early 2000s, WVU was beginning to digitize their massive slide collection. I was tasked with scanning, sorting, and generating metadata in a very rudimentary manner compared to how things are done today. From that work as an undergraduate, I worked as the main point of contact with our slide library as an Art History Graduate student. WVU uses MDID, and by the late 2000s, I worked closely with librarian Beth Royall to fill the MDID server with thousands of digitized images. I was fortunate to have worked with Beth Royall as she taught me a great deal about the ‘library’ side of database management. My early college education in Commercial Design was important in my usage of image editing software as well. As I wrapped up my graduate education, I opted to find work while trying to decide whether or not to seek a PhD. I was extremely fortunate to be hired in late 2008 by the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. I have been at Greensboro since, and during that time UNCG has transitioned from MDID to ArtSTOR and JSTOR Forum. We have scanned over 100,000 slides in my now 10 years at UNCG, and maintain a digital collection of nearly 70,000 high quality images.
What is your favorite part of your work? Can you describe any project(s) you’re currently working on? My favorite part of my job is the independence to work in a manner that suits my skills. As a solo professional, I have the flexibility to move through my department and fill needs as necessary. Also as a solo professional, I have the freedom to research and plan without hinderance. Currently, my space is being reconfigured after the department has switched wholly to digital images. The reconfiguring project is slow going as there is no budget for the space, and any financial help is usually in the form of leftover monies or one-time funds.
What does a typical work day look like for you? A typical day starts, naturally, with coffee! Being a solo professional, you need to be an expert at time management. A typical day, after sufficient amounts of coffee, is responding to emails, ordering books for the Art department, managing work-study and graduate students to scan or organize images, dealing with faculty when classroom computers/projectors have hiccups, getting to know the University Librarians on a first name basis, and looking a lots and lots of interesting art.
What were some challenges you came across when you first started out in the field of visual resources? Some of the challenges I came across when I was first hired are some of the same challenges I have 10 years later: funding. The Visual Resources Library at UNCG does not have an operating budget–not even a line in the department budget. Negotiating the replacement of computers, scanners, and projectors has been turned into a fine art, and I am content to use suitable hand-me-downs from our digital labs. I chalk that up to having good relationships with my department head and faculty members, including those who manage the digital labs. I also attribute the success of dealing with little to no money to operate to the skill of self-promotion, especially as a solo professional.
What skills do you use for your job that you didn’t learn while in school? Though I had some basic courses in photography, I have had to learn how to use digital cameras for copy-stand work. Most of this work was learned through trial and error and lot of YouTube videos. Since learning more about basic copy-stand photography, I have gone on to work on bulking up my skill with architectural photography worthy to add to our database.
Looking back, what accomplishments are you most proud of? I feel my best accomplishment in terms of my work is negotiating the funding and transition from MDID to JSTOR Forum. The transition was needed, and I was very concerned that the cost of a subscription to ArtSTOR and migration would be too high. UNCG has been using ArtSTOR and JSTOR Forum for several years now, and as a university, I feel we are very satisfied with this move.
What is one thing in the visual resources field that you think is lacking or missing? This is a tough question in the sense that I really do not know how to answer it. I have found that other professionals in the field have been wonderful mentors and friends, open to help with questions we may have as professionals. I also feel that a lot of concerns we may have as professionals are discussed at our conferences and chapter meetings.
What is something that most excites you about the field of visual resources? The need to consistently learn to keep up with emerging technologies.
Where else do you seek professional development opportunities other than VRA? I am currently obtaining a certificate in Historic Preservation and have found a lot of crossovers into the visual resources field. The digitization of analog sources and generation of metadata in the Historic Preservation field is often an internship/job opportunity. I have also found that working in Historic Preservation there are more opportunities to research personal interests and develop academic papers
Do you have any words of advice or wisdom for emerging professionals and students in this field? Be flexible and be knowledgeable. I feel I have had to keep myself educated on more than the visual resources field. With my background in Art History, I have had to pick up a lot of Library Sciences along the way! Make yourself indispensable, whether it be in dealing with faculty members or students, whether it be dealing with technology, etc. Make allies who understand that your center/library is an important forum for new and innovative ideas as well as a digital (or analog) warehouse of visual resources!
What are some of your favorite things outside of work? What are some of your hobbies? While working on my certificate in Historic Preservation, I have been working on a multi-phase project to develop a history of my hometown in West Virginia. I started with a paper I presented at Fontbonne University in May 2018. The project is a collaboration with current and past residents of Camden-On-Gauley, WV through social media. I have a great interest in Appalachian history and image making in the region (vernacular photography and art). Along the same vein, I love to knit, crochet, and cross stitch. A love of fiber arts was passed down to me, and I continue the family tradition of knitting and crocheting and quilting. I enjoy reading the cultural histories of fiber arts. I also enjoy writing fictional vignettes for my friends and for myself. I strive to write every day, either academically or for fun.
Anything else you would like to add?! This year, I suggested a new SIG for Solo Professionals. However, I was unable to secure funding from my department to attend. While somewhat ironic, it is illustrative of one issue I was hoping to address with the SIG. I hope, in the meantime, that others will be able to take over the SIG so that we can form new and important bonds between solo professionals.
Reach out to Teresa at 📧 tlcunnin@uncg.edu
Feeling a bit overwhelmed or suffering from imposter syndrome in the Visual Resources field? Sign up to be a mentee in the VRA’s Year-round Mentorship Program! Learn more: http://vraweb.org/opportunities/mentorship/ or connect with other VREPS on Slack!
Can you tell us a little bit about your background, your current position and how you got into the field of visual resources? I worked in a Visual Resources Collection as an art history undergrad and loved it. After graduating earlier than expected I wasn’t prepared to go straight to graduate school so I found a job in arts publishing. Eventually, I began working remotely and ended up at the Reed College VRC as the Digital Resources Specialist. At that time the VRC was a part of the art department and I mostly oversaw the digitization of visual resources for the art and humanities courses. After the original VR curator retired the department became a part of the library and our work expanded quite a bit. While working as a paraprofessional I went back to school and got an MLIS from the University of Washington. After graduating my supervisor took another opportunity mid-year leaving the Visual Resources Librarian position vacant. I acted as interim librarian for a year and here we are. I now manage the Visual Resources Center and am the liaison librarian to art history and studio art.
What is your favorite part of your work? Can you describe any project(s) you’re currently working on? I love when a patron asks for help researching an image and we are able to find what they’re looking for with almost no information to go off of. Once I had a faculty member ask us to find an image of an exhibition poster that they had seen “somewhere in NYC, sometime in the 70s.’ It took a while, but we were able to track it down and they were grateful. Currently, we are working with Special Collections and Archives to photograph all of the artist books in our collection and laying the groundwork to revamp our artist book digital collection. The collection has a ton of potential but was initially a grant-funded project and it hasn’t gotten enough love over the years.
What does a typical work day look like for you? Since we are a unit of the library and I wear many hats there isn’t really a typical day for me. I could be overseeing image reserves, doing library reference/instruction, working on software development or processing images for the campus art gallery. Since I’m at an academic library there is a cyclical aspect to my work depending on the time of year, but most days are completely different.
What were some challenges you came across when you first started out in the field of visual resources? Advocacy. When I started working in visual resources the transition from analog to digital media had just begun and I don’t think people could predict how increasingly visual the world would become. That coupled with the 2007 financial crisis led to a lot of uncertainty that I think is still being felt today.
I am fortunate to support an art department who sees our value and allows us to have a great degree of independence. Before the VRC was integrated into the library there were some gaps in service and workflows that needed to be rethought. Our daily activities were not supporting the community as best they could so I identified problem areas and figured out how to solve them.
We have a large textbook reserve program so I rebranded our imaging service as image reserves. We’ve undertaken large scale projects to replace high-use images that had been scanned not using best practices and I always look for opportunities to engage faculty who have never used images in their classrooms.
What skills do you use for your job that you didn’t learn while in school? I learned both copy stand photography and advanced image editing on the job. I had one year of fashion school to fall back on for things like color theory, but otherwise, everything was learned through practice and trial/error.
Looking back, what accomplishments are you most proud of? Building and overseeing the migration of our digital collections from a proprietary digital asset management system to a homegrown one. It’s a work in progress, but I am super proud of it considering there are only 6 of us on the team.
What is one thing in the visual resources field that you think is lacking or missing? I’d love to see more collaboration with organizations like DLF, LITA or code4lib. It’s always enlightening to hear what folks outside of traditional VRCs are thinking about. Some of my most inspirational conversations have been with public librarians so more cross-pollination is always good.
What is something that most excites you about the field of visual resources? More institutions are releasing high-resolution images for educational use and undertaking digital humanities projects. The availability of these materials makes my job easier, but more importantly, it inspires the community and increases the quality of scholarship produced.
Where else do you seek professional development opportunities other than VRA? Library Juice and the other professional organizations I am a part of.
What other professional organizations are you a part of? ARLIS-NA, ALA, OLA, ACRL. Professional organizations are definitely valuable especially when you are just beginning your career. Aside from providing networking opportunities, they are a reliable sounding board.
Do you have any words of advice or wisdom for emerging professionals and students in this field? Never turn down an opportunity to learn something new. The arts publishing job I got right out of undergrad did not deal with visual resources and was far from glamorous, but the skills I learned there are directly applicable to the work I do today.
What are some of your favorite things outside of work? What are some of your hobbies? Restoring my funky mid-century house, cooking/baking, spending time with my partner and playing action RPGs and survival horror video games.
Feeling a bit overwhelmed or suffering from imposter syndrome in the Visual Resources field? Sign up to be a mentee in the VRA’s Year-round Mentorship Program! Learn more: http://vraweb.org/opportunities/mentorship/ or connect with other VREPS on Slack!
Can you tell us a little bit about your background, your current position and how you got into the field of visual resources? Sometimes the part-time student work positions you have in undergrad send you on unexpected career trajectories! I have a BAFA in art history and had a student work position in the slide library, where I did copy photography; masked, mounted, and labeled slides; and spent hours fussing over a thematic reorganization of the Picasso drawer. When I found it impossible to pick an area to focus on in time to apply to master’s programs in art history, I decided to pursue a master’s in library studies instead. I figured being a librarian was the perfect career for someone interested in everything! I never imagined I would see a 35mm slide again, but when I graduated with my library degree there was an opening for a slide librarian within the art history and studio art department of a local university, and with the combination of my degrees and my student work experience I was able to secure the position.
After two years as a solo slide librarian at a university, I joined the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in their image library. The MFAH has a studio art school, so our department served the image needs of both the museum and the school. At first, I was primarily responsible for shooting and cataloging copy photography needed for lectures, but as time went on I was given responsibility for licensing images of collection objects to external requesters and then securing images and permissions for MFAH publications.
A few years ago an opening became available handling rights and reproductions at the Menil Collection, and it was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up to gain more experience without relocating. About a year and a half ago I moved into the role of Digital Asset Manager, so I’m now head of a three-person department responsible for imaging services, rights and reproductions, and digital asset management. Our department is under the umbrella of the larger Collection Management department.
What is your favorite part of your work? Can you describe any project(s) you’re currently working on? My favorite part about my work is that it allows me to collaborate with almost every department at my institution. I work with funny, kind, fascinating people, and I enjoy getting to know them as we work on projects together.
We are in the midst of a flurry of grant-funded digitization. The Houston Endowment’s support has allowed us to equip an industry-standard photo studio, which serves as an interdepartmental space where conservation imaging and collections photography are captured cooperatively, minimizing unnecessary handling of objects. Our Conservation Imaging Specialist, Adam Neese, and I have worked closely to establish workflows and standards for this project that we hope will serve us well beyond the end of the granting period. We were lucky enough to be able to bring on Paul Hester, a long-time Menil collaborator, as the grant photographer two days a week. Last week a career-spanning exhibition of Paul’s work opened at Rice University.
Another current project is creating a new JSTOR Forum project with our librarian, Lauren Gottlieb-Miller, that will become an Artstor Public Collection once it’s ready for prime time. We are creating a visual finding aid for one of the library’s rare book collections, and Lauren and I were excited to tackle a discrete project that can be finished within a few months. It’s great to identify projects like that to give you a feeling of accomplishment when everything else you’re working on seems Sisyphean!
What does a typical work day look like for you? Every day is different, which I love, but I’m trying to routinize my work more and block out time regularly for the different projects I should be making progress on. I spend a lot of my time communicating and planning, making sure my department’s work goes smoothly and people have the information and resources they need to do their jobs. Then there are my own tasks that I need to see to, like reviewing images in our collection management system that will be pushed to our online collection pages and reconciling our photo shoot lists with image files received to make sure nothing falls through the cracks.
At the Menil, we work 9 to 5, and I try to stick to that unless there’s a looming deadline or I’m on a roll and can’t resist staying late. (I’m an afternoon/evening person.) Many of my colleagues here are also working artists, so it’s important to them to have a schedule that gives them time to devote to their art.
What were some challenges you came across when you first started out in the field of visual resources? When I started out as a university slide librarian in 2003, I was a department of one and felt quite isolated. The VRA was a great resource, and I often turned to the listserv for advice. The university also gave me all the support I could handle in the form of student workers, and building relationships with them was a great boost for me. I’m still close friends with one of them and traveled to St. Louis for her wedding.
What is one thing in the visual resources field that you think is lacking or missing? I think community outreach needs to be emphasized more. Organizing community scanning days, reaching out to local groups that probably have visual resources that should be preserved for the future—these could be great ways to share our skills and increase our feelings of professional fulfillment.
What other professional organizations are you a part of? I’m a member of MCN, which attracts all kinds of museum professionals who are interested in technology and digital practices in museums. While I’m usually there to try to connect with other digital asset managers, I also like hearing about all the digital projects going on at different museums because it helps me think about how my role might be able to facilitate something similar at my own institution.
What are some of your favorite things outside of work? What are some of your hobbies? I volunteer for an organization called Sight into Sound, which provides audio information for the blind, visually impaired, and physically handicapped. At first, I recorded audio books for them, but now I read the Houston Chronicle live on the air on Sunday mornings. It’s a great way to stay up to date on local news and also helps me overcome my perfectionist tendencies. If I stumble over a word, I have to shake it off and keep going!
It may sound cheesy, but I really do think you receive more than you give through volunteering. It’s a wonderful way to learn a new skill, make new friends, and give yourself a window into a totally different world. Having a weekly volunteer commitment can help give you perspective if you’re feeling consumed by the stressors of your particular workplace.
Reach out to Margaret at 📧 mmckee@menil.org or 👋 meet her at VRA 2019 in Los Angeles! You can also find photos of her cats on Instagram @mmemargaret 🐈🐈🐈
Feeling a bit overwhelmed or suffering from imposter syndrome in the Visual Resources field? Sign up to be a mentee in the VRA’s Year-round Mentorship Program! Learn more: http://vraweb.org/opportunities/mentorship/ or connect with other VREPS on Slack!
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 fill out a Member Profile Questionnaire, please get in touch with me at knw2@williams.edu
Grace Barth
Can you tell us a little bit about your background, your current position and how you got into the field of visual resources?
My background is in Art History and libraries, and I got into visual resources as it was the perfect combination of both interests for me. I began working in visual resources as an undergraduate student, took a part-time position while completing my MLIS, and began full-time work about six months after graduation. Currently, I am the Head of Digital Collections for James Madison University Libraries and have been in this position for about two years.
What is your favorite part about your work? Can you describe any project(s) you’re currently working on?
I love working with the rare and unique materials housed in our Special Collections, as well as identifying collections that are good candidates for online access, and partnering with others across campus to manage journals, conferences, and other scholarship in our institutional repository. Some of our current projects are processing a large donation of digitized and born-digital audiovisual content from our campus poetry center, working on assigning DOIs to electronic theses and dissertations, and piloting the Google Cultural Institute platform for digital exhibitions.
What does a typical work day look like for you?
A typical day includes meeting with staff about various collections being digitized, cataloged, and put online; working with faculty and students using our platforms to create projects or share scholarship; and working with library staff in technology, special collections, and metadata to coordinate larger cross-departmental projects.
What were some challenges you came across when you first started out in the field of visual resources?
It was really difficult to find full-time work in the field without needing to relocate.
What skills do you use for your job that you didn’t learn while in school?
My role has evolved to include support for digital scholarship and scholarly communication work on campus. In graduate school, I was heavily focused on digitization and the inner workings of databases, and while that knowledge is still valuable, I now do a lot of end-user training and project scoping in more of a consultative and outreach capacity.
Looking back, what accomplishments are you most proud of?
I’m very proud of the work I did while running the visual resources center on campus– digitizing the legacy slide collection and directing a large renovation project to re-envision the space were my two largest accomplishments during my time there because they had a clear positive impact on the students and faculty.
Where else do you seek professional development opportunities other than VRA?
What other professional organizations are you a part of? Do you find professional organizations valuable?
I find professional organizations very valuable for bouncing ideas of off others, sharing resources and workflows, and building my network. I’m a member of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference.
Do you have any words of advice or wisdom for emerging professionals and students in this field?
Be flexible and open to where your skills and experience might take you!
Know someone working in a museum, archive, or arts institution? Let them know about the Visual Resources Association! Explore what a VRA membership has to offer! Don’t forget to join other emerging professionals and students in visual resources on Slack.
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 fill out a Member Profile Questionnaire, please get in touch with me at knw2@williams.edu
Chris Strasbaugh
Can you tell us a little bit about your background, your current position and how you got into the field of visual resources? I am a photographer turned art historian that found a home in visual resources by luck in grad school. The Visual Resources Library needed a photographer and I needed a job. From there I discovered that this is the perfect mix of imaging, technology, and education.
What is your favorite part about your work? Can you describe any project(s) you’re currently working on? Teaching and employing emerging tech into the teaching and learning of the school. Drones and virtual reality are my two main projects right now and I am working on finding ways to combine the two to create georeferenced sites that can be experienced and explored in VR.
What does a typical work day look like for you? 10,000-15,000 steps. I manage a staff of 9 student employees that reside in the Knowlton School Archive as well as the Digital Library. I am firm believer that in-person communication is what creates opportunities, innovations, collaborations so I make sure to spend parts of my day checking-in with other staff, faculty, and students to see what they are working on or exploring. It helps to connect people together and allows me to know where to spend my energy for long-term projects.
What were some challenges you came across when you first started out in the field of visual resources? There is a big learning curve as well as a need to show relevance. Relevance was the most important part so I focused on small things like creating an open environment, teaching visual literacy and search techniques, and made improvements in areas that I was comfortable. This built trust and allowed for support for attending the VRA conference which has also been so important.
What skills do you use for your job that you didn’t learn while in school? Pretty much everything regarding metadata, archival techniques, and visual literacy.
Looking back, what accomplishments are you most proud of? Presenting on hacking imaging technology at the Rijksmuseum for the 2+3D Prophecies conference, being staff photographer for two excavations in Greece and Israel, and getting drones and VR implemented into the curriculum in Knowlton School.
What is something that most excites you about the field of visual resources. I love how visual resources is expanding into so many fields and industries. We are well outside the slide library, or even image collections, and include anyone that deals with data that describes places, people, or things. We really are ahead of so many and have so much to teach others.
Do you have any words of advice or wisdom for emerging professionals and students in this field? See the small things that can make a big difference. For me it was just keep the door open to the VRC and it is amazing at the difference that made in my career.
What are some of your favorite things outside of work? What are some of your hobbies? I love working with kids and can talk for days about Disney.
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