27th Annual Conference
March 18-21, 2009
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General Conference Support  |
Thursday, March 19 7:30 – 9:00 am First Time Attendees and New Members Breakfast This annual breakfast is a great chance for those who are attending their first VRA conference to mix and mingle with both new and longtime members of the Association. It is also a terrific opportunity to be paired with an experienced VRA member through the VRA mentor program, so be sure to sign up when you register for the conference! 8:00 am – 6:00 pm Registration 8:30 am - 5:00 pm VRAffle See Special Events section. 9:00 - 10:30 am Ask the Expert: Creating a Wiki/blog for your VRC Wanna figure out how to start a blog for your collection?
(What IS a blog, anyway?) Are wikis the root of all evil, or a really
cool collaborative tool to use in your projects? 'Fraid to contribute
to someone else's wiki, make a glaring error, and expose yourself
as a luddite rube? Ask a non-threatening common-folk slide wrangler
the questions your IT staff or twenty-something students laugh at
you for asking....
Session 2: Outside the Canon A dynamic group of speakers will discuss their work on recent and ongoing projects that often push the boundaries of traditional content areas in visual resources. Topics include; Tractors & Life on the American Front ‐ Digitizing the Theo Brown Diaries; Creating Collections in the Arts and Humanities in an Institutional Context; Hunting for Art; On the Trail of Elusive Works; Building an Artist‐centered Image Collection with Flickr.
Session 3: New Strategies for Digital Asset Discovery This session explores strategies for digital asset discovery. As VR professionals we now navigate nimbly between collection management systems (DAMs) and presentation tools (DAPs), but the user often suffers from a lack of information depth, as our rich collection management systems are skimmed for very shallow information to be loaded into a presentation tool. Gone, or greatly reduced, are the traditional means of discover. This session looks at three: the incorporation of deeper vocabularies, user-side tagging, and technical image metadata.
11:00 am – 12:30 pm Session 4: Engaging New Technologies, Part I This fast‐paced session will demonstrate a rich variety of new technologies, and show how to engage with a heady array of contemporary products, services and tools. Organized as two distinct but complementary 90 minute sections, this session will present overviews (5‐10 minutes each) of at least 10 tools, providing for each a sample of an “end product” use, an overview of the software itself (demystifying the process involved in using it), followed by an open opportunity to brainstorm about how each tool or technology can be applied (matched) to our own work to support instruction, communication and research. Tools and technologies covered will include: museum/public outreach (podcasts and YouTube); new display technologies (Zoomii and Photosynth); communication tools, such as wikis, blogs, Twitter, RSS feeds; instructional tools, such as remote meeting, webinar and video screen capture software; social software, such as Flickr, MySpace, Google Docs; tools for scholarly research and teaching, including Second Life, Zotero, Google Earth and other GIS tools. [NOTE: This session will be continued as Engaging New Technologies, Part 2, offered Thursday at 2:00 ‐3:30 p.m. You may choose to attend either or both sections, as content will not be repeated between the two.]
Session 5: Roundtable on Issues in Visual Resources Administration This roundtable will bring together visual resources professionals from a cross‐section of institutions to discuss a variety of topics in visual resources management, and offer insight into the effective administration of image collections in the digital age. The Roundtable will focus on budgeting, staffing, space/facilities needs, and cross‐institutional collaborations; cataloging, metadata, and digital imaging per se will not be considered except in relation to the more general topics of budgeting, staffing, and other administrative issues. [NOTE: While the Roundtable panel and audience discussion are intended to complement the Workshop “Issues in Visual Resources Administration” offered on Wednesday, 9:00 a.m. – 12:00 noon, these two events will present different aspects of the topic.]
12:30 - 2:00 pm Ask the Expert: Teaching Teachers ARTstor and MDID I have conducted intensive one-on-one training sessions with faculty
(art history and other disciplines) and taught group workshops as
well. Adapting my training to the different learning styles of the
faculty, I have enjoyed some success breaking down barriers of those
who are reluctant or technology-resistant. I would be happy to share
my insights and strategies with others.
Birds of a Feather Network Luncheons 2:00 - 3:30pm Session 4: Engaging New Technologies, Part 2 This fast‐paced session will demonstrate a rich variety of new technologies, and show how to engage with a heady array of contemporary products, services and tools. Organized as two distinct but complementary 90 minute sections, this session will present overviews (5‐10 minutes each) of at least 10 tools, providing for each a sample of an “end product” use, an overview of the software itself (demystifying the process involved in using it), followed by an open opportunity to brainstorm about how each tool or technology can be applied (matched) to our own work to support instruction, communication and research. Tools and technologies covered will include: museum/public outreach (podcasts and YouTube); new display technologies (Zoomii and Photosynth); communication tools, such as wikis, blogs, Twitter, RSS feeds; instructional tools, such as remote meeting, webinar and video screen capture software; social software, such as Flickr, MySpace, Google Docs; tools for scholarly research and teaching, including Second Life, Zotero, Google Earth and other GIS tools. [NOTE: This is a continuation of Engaging New Technologies, Part 1, offered Thursday at 11:00 a.m.‐12:30 p.m. You may choose to attend either or both sections, as content will not be repeated between the two.]
Session 6: Bricks to Bamboo; Cataloging and Photographing the Materials Library A Materials Library is often an important component of the curriculum in the teaching of architecture, structural engineering, and the built environment. Cataloging, capturing, and displaying such a collection of materials, examples, and product samples presents formidable challenges. This session will include several presentations by architecture curators with experience in managing or developing Materials Libraries in academic settings. The cataloging of unusual materials will be addressed, along with conceptual and practical issues.
2:00 - 4:30 pm Meeting: VRA Foundation Board II 4:00pm - 5:30pm Special Users Group: ARTstor ARTstor is a digital library of images, associated information, and software tools designed to enhance teaching, learning, and scholarship in the arts and associated fields. ARTstor contains over 900,000 images of art, architecture, and archaeology from a wide range of cultures and time periods. ARTstor representatives will give brief presentations on topics such as collections news, technology enhancements, the ARTstor Hosting Program, and progress on interoperation efforts. A Q&A session will follow; conference participants are encourages to submit questions in advance to the session moderator.
Session 7: Metadata in Action; Leveraging Assets with Core4 and CCO This session will focus on how specific collections have implemented the Core4 and CCO data standards. Presenters will talk about the challenges involved in promoting the use of standards in collaborative projects (technical, administrative and social); address issues and considerations surrounding the preparation of data for export and dissemination via various delivery platforms; and show how the use of data standards promotes and enhances access to collections, and facilitates cross‐collection and cross‐disciplinary discovery.
7:00 - 10:00 pm VRA Members Reception and Keynote Address The Keynote address will be given by Michael Edson, Director of Web and New Media Strategy at the Smithsonian Institution, detailing an emerging open access strategy for cultural heritage materials. http://community.toc.oreilly.com/profile/MichaelEdson |