At a Glance

Full Schedule (PDF)

Wednesday, March 12

Thursday, March 13

Friday, March 14

Saturday, March 15

Sunday, March 16

Saturday, March 15

7:00 am - 8:00 am

Meeting: Toronto Planning

7:30 am – 9:00 am  

Meeting: Awards Committee

Meeting: Development Committee

Meeting: CCO Project Committee

8:00 am – 6:00 pm

Registration

8:00 am - 5:00 pm

Exhibit Hall

8:00 am – 4:00 pm

VRAffle

9:00 am - 12:30 pm

Poster Sessions

Poster Session 1: Computational Linguistics in Image Access Research

The Computational Linguistics for Metadata Building (CLiMB-2) is based at the University of Maryland's College of Information Studies (CLIS). This project, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, uses innovative computational linguistic techniques to improve subject access to image collections.  The goal of CLiMB-2 is to refine a catalogers\' toolkit, developed during a previous phase of this research project. This toolkit will enable semi-automated extraction of a range of subject access points from scholarly texts.  In this session, presenters will share 1) new features added to the Toolkit, 2) refinements to previously implemented features, 3) findings from cataloger and end user studies and 4) a discussion of how these findings were incorporated into CLiMB toolkit development.

Poster Session 2: Informal to Formal: Managing Personal and Public Collections Using DIVA

As campus collection resource areas grapple to go digital, academic technology infrastructures increasingly focus on individual problem areas.  This focus solves immediate problems, but does little to integrate resources with teaching and learning.  At San Francisco State University, we have created the Digital Information Virtual Archive (DIVA), a unique hybrid tool which combines strong support for visual resources with the broader range of digital file types and support systems. Using DIVA, faculty can build collections, drawing from a range of sources including informal personal collections as well as formal resource areas.  Files available through the system can be shared, contextualized, and remixed within DIVA or in systems to which DIVA connects, such as learning management systems.  DIVA adds cutting-edge tools for creating web-shareable documents, galleries, and slide shows. All DIVA objects contain strong support for existing and emergent metadata standards, such as VRA Core 4.0. DIVA is an actively developed project being piloted within the California State University system.  We are establishing a planning team to open source our technologies in the near future.  This session will include a demonstration of DIVA and a discussion of DIVA\'s role within academic technology, including how visual resource coordinators are currently using DIVA at San Francisco State University.

Poster Session 3: Capturing the Web 

With the rapid growth of the Internet and the World Wide Web, millions of people have grown so accustomed to using these tools as resources to acquire information that the availability of electronic information is today taken for granted. It is a fallacy that if something is on the web, it will be there forever. The average life span of a Web page is only 44 days.  There's an urgent need for people to understand that the web is who we are. It's the culture of this era and our social fabric. We don't want to lose any of it and yet what is here today may be gone tomorrow. Join the Internet Archive and some of their library and archive partners as they discuss the importance of archiving the web, including lessons learned, challenges and roadblocks they face as well as sharing some of their success stories.

Poster Session 4: Researching Art-Historical information using the TTC-ATENEA system: interactivity-based approach

The purpose of this poster session is to demonstrate the research opportunities that the TTC-ATENEA system offers to specialists in art history. This system is currently being developed in a project sponsored by the Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia of Spain under my supervision. This system can be defined as a virtual net made up of two complementary components: an electronic text database (ATENEA), and the terminological conceptual thesaurus (TTC). The TTC is a knowledge tool for art specialists that consists of a compilation of described, classified and linked terms and concepts. The textual database consists of important art-historical texts, encoded in XML-TEI, that supply the terms and concepts recorded in the thesaurus. The TTC-ATENEA system provides full interaction between the ATENEA corpus and the TTC. The system easily allows the definition of connections between a term in an XML-TEI marked text and the registry of the TTC, where the term is described according to how it has been used in that particular text. Thus, one of the most important potentialities of the system derives from the interactions that users are able to establish among the different types of information compiled in each repository. The configuration of this system was determined by the main purpose of the project itself--that is, to provide a satisfactory answer to the terminological/conceptual problems that encumber the task of conducting research in art theory, due to the high degree of semantic density of the terminology contained in historical documents. However, this system can also be a complementary tool for organizing and retrieving artistic information in all its diverse dimensions: terminology and concepts, visual resources, and textual material.

12:30-2 pm

Leadership Luncheon

Ask the Experts

Strategic Planning
Expert: Trudy Levy, Image Integration

I will help you find the missing pieces in your plan. Haven't started one?  Then let us talk about the form it should take and questions you need to answer.
Note: ‘Ask the Experts’ is by prior reservation only, to reserve a slot e-mail Marcia Focht at mfocht@binghamton.edu. 

Rights Information
Expert: Maureen Whalen, Associate General Counsel, J. Paul Getty Trust

Determining rights information and then capturing it in a digital asset management system make the difference between digitizing an image only to have it sit on a server and being able to make timely decisions about using the digital surrogate. While there is no simple solution to obtaining permission when needed, there is a lot to be said for knowing if the work is likely to be protected by copyright and the rights holder's identity and contact information. This session offers you an opportunity to ask questions about rights metadata and how to simplify and organize its inclusion in database records. Maureen Whalen is the Associate General Counsel for the J. Paul Getty Trust where she is a transactional lawyer working on acquisitions and intellectual property matters. Prior to joining the Trust, Whalen spent more than twenty years in the cable television industry, including more than twelve years at The Walt Disney Company.
Note: ‘Ask the Experts’ is by prior reservation only, to reserve a slot e-mail Marcia Focht at mfocht@binghamton.edu. 

2:00 pm-5:30 pm

Mini-Workshop 2
VRA Core 4 Intermediate

2:00 pm-3:30 pm

Workshop 5: VRA Core 4 Intermediate

This workshop will provide a very basic introduction to XML concepts, an in-depth look at the VRA Core 4 XML schema, and a brief overview of the Core 4 standard and its relation to the wider data standards landscape. Participants will be expected to have a basic working knowledge of the Core 4 element structure (available at http://vraweb.org/projects/vracore4/index.html ) and will help build a Core 4-compliant XML data file from the ground up out of basic descriptive metadata. 

Session 8: Digital Anatomy

This session is dedicated to understanding the various properties, components, and "anatomy" of which a digital image is comprised. Topics include: Differences between common file formats (jpeg, tiff, raw); defining bits and bytes; dpi/ppi, pixels, and image size explained; color channels, color spaces, and color profiles; how to read and interpret histograms. The session will show how learning about the composition and behavior of the little colored squares known as pixels is the first step to toward successfully performing any complex image-related task. An understanding of these topics provides the fundamental knowledge necessary to make institution- and situation-specific decisions about image capture, editing, and longterm storage. This session is intended to act as an intermediate point, standing between basic scanning/digital copystand/image editing skills, and a practical understanding of color management/archival concerns/standards and pr

Session 9: Digital (Dis)Order: Implementing Professional and Organizational Change

After a long period of stability, visual resources professionals, librarians, and information technologists are experiencing the constant change of a new digital order, or more accurately, disorder. Experts at organizing our physical environment, patrons are no longer walking in the door and prefer to serve themselves from the endless supply of information on the Web. What worked in the analog world may or may not work with the new complexities of digital information. Many are questioning the fundamental nature of their work—unsure of which hat to wear at any given time and who should be wearing it. Although creating common ground between information technology, librarianship, and visual resources, digital disorder has also accentuated differences and created anxiety. What is worth collecting and how should we build collections in the light of Google books and Flickr images? How do we reach and engage patrons? How do we keep up with the explosion of software tools patrons are experimenting with or might need to use pedagogically? Are the services that we provide the same, complementary, or do they differ? How do we candidly assess job differences, including what functions are worth keeping and which might need to be jettisoned? Can we leverage all of our strengths to define a new 21st century information professional? How do we make administrative adjustments without negatively impacting patrons and existing staff? What is the best way to communicate and mobilize for functional collaboration? This panel will explore these tensions and how our knowledge, work, and organizational cultures might be adjusted to implement positive change.

4:00 pm - 5:30 pm

Special Users Group 6: Museum Visual Resources

The Museum Visual Resources Special Interest Group provides an opportunity for museum professionals to gather and informally update each other on current projects, priorities and directions within the museum environment.  Discussions may include changes in roles and responsibilities, use of museum collection management systems, identifying cataloging opportunities, providing access to digital images and collaborating with other museum departments. This special interest group meeting is for museum professionals and/or individuals interested in issues specific to museum visual resources.

6:00 pm – 7:30 pm

VRAffle

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