Happy New Year VRA! I wish you health, happiness, and a terrific year ahead. Looks like 2012 is off to a good start.

The VRA Bulletin is now live and online at http://online.vraweb.org/. We invite you to explore the new web site and start uploading content—the VRAB will be as good as you make it. As the journal of our professional practice, we are looking primarily for feature articles (c. 2,000-5,000 words in length) on: 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. There is a new “Perspectives” section to provide VRA members the opportunity to write thoughtful, measured, and well-researched professional opinion articles (c. 1,000 to 3,000 words) on a particular subject or issue of interest. Members may also provide review articles of print publications, lectures, presentations, databases, online collections, software, standards, imaging equipment, etc. (c. 250 to 1,000 words). Association news that should be a part of our permanent record will also be published in the VRAB. Past conference presentations have always been a particularly welcome form of content and may only need a little tweaking to become a feature article—formalizing language, copy editing, adding hyperlinks (particularly useful for navigating while reading online), footnotes, references, etc. So, bring it on Minneapolis presenters!

Any questions about how your written work fits in to the new format? Contact Anne Blecksmith, Content Editor. There are detailed submission guidelines on the site, but you will probably find the process to be easy and straightforward. Want assistance with your first upload? Jason Miller, Production Editor, will walk you through. You do not have to wait for a publications call or deadline. VRA Online is open 24/7 and wants to publish your ideas, research, projects, and experiences. The electronic format allows for global digital dissemination, full-text search and display, enhanced discoverability, and increased citation rates that could strengthen resumes, impact professional opportunities, and promote the field of visual resources. The VRA Bulletin is there to document VRA activities and the work of information professionals in image management. So, jump in, the water is warm!

Conference season will be upon us before we know it. The 100th annual College Art Association conference will be held in Los Angeles from February 22nd to 25th. CAA is our oldest affiliate and we are planning a number of activities to celebrate the fact that we have been around for 30 of CAA’s 100 years. You do not have to register for the CAA conference to attend affiliate sessions and business meetings; your membership in VRA is enough. John Trendler organized the VRA session entitled “Paint, Prints & Pixels:  Learning from the History of Teaching with Images” scheduled for Thursday, February 23rd, from 12:30-2 in the LA Convention Center Concourse Meeting Room 403A. An exciting slate of speakers will explore everything from the changes in image technology to visual literacy. ARLIS/NA’s affiliate session is also focused in image issues. It’s entitled “Collaboration, Access, Sustainability: The Future of Image Research Collections” and is scheduled on Friday, February 24th, from 5:30-7 in West Hall Meeting Room 511BC. The VRA Business Meeting will take place on Saturday, February 25th, from 12:30-2 in Concourse Meeting Room 407. In addition to organizational updates, we plan to discuss the VRA’s new Fair Use Guidelines and how VR curators might consider implementing ACRL’s Visual Literacy Standards. The business meeting will be followed by a walking tour of “Historic Downtown” provided by the LA Conservancy and refreshments at the most intriguing establishment seen along the way.

Registrationmailto:http://www.vraweb.org/conferences/vra30/registration/registration.html is open for the VRA conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, from April 18th-21st. Please join us for what will surely be a memorable 30th anniversary celebration in the beautiful Southwest. The full program is up and available in SCHED with two notable plenary speakers to open and close the conference—Todd Carter, co-founder of Tagasauris, a crowd-powered tagging tool that uses the Web as a database to annotate images and other media for improved discoverability and Amy Herman, who designed, developed, and conducts sessions related to the Art of Perception. Other pertinent sessions include topics such as new technologies, emerging professional roles, visual literacy, embedded metadata, cataloging issues, digital asset management, archival collections, digitizing originals, outreach, collaboration, and using video in educational, scholarly, and archival contexts. Workshops focus on cataloging the art and architecture of the Americas, grant writing for special projects, DIY Web design, and effective communication with both decision makers and student staff (first-come, first-served). A full array of favorite conference formats, like the Vendor Slam, and dynamic new conference experiences, such as What’s Your Story, are planned. In addition to a substantive program, opportunities to network, and sights to see, your registration includes a 30th Anniversary Fiesta at Casa Esencia, the Armijo family hacienda built in 1783, next door to and now owned by the Hotel Albuquerque, our conference headquarters. Please also consider joining in on the Tansey Event to support VRA’s travel awards program. This year a performance of Spanish guitar and Flamenco dancing featuring the University of New Mexico’s Alma Flamenca is our fundraising event. Bus tours to Santa Fe are also being offered. So, broaden your horizons and come to Albuquerque where you can enhance your professional toolkit, catch up with colleagues, make new connections, and experience the richness of Southwest culture.

Other conferences of interest in the Spring include two of our valued affiliations, the Art Libraries Society of North America and the Society of Architectural Historians. ARLIS is celebrating their 40th anniversary in Toronto from March 29th to April 2nd with the theme of “Colouring Outside the Lines.” SAH’s 65th annual conference is taking place in Detroit from April 18th-22nd. We try to avoid overlapping conferences with out affiliate organizations, but unfortunately we weren’t yet affiliated with SAH when we scheduled 2012. Apologies to those of you who try to attend both VRA and SAH, we didn’t intend to make it so difficult for you this year. They are now on our radar and we hope to avoid such conflicts in the future. Registration is currently open for both of these conferences.

No matter what part of the country you are in, it looks like there are professional development and learning opportunities in hitting distance. And, to bring this back to where we started, if you attend such conferences and professional activities of interest, please consider sharing any intriguing information obtained with the VRA membership in the new electronic VRA Bulletin or Images Newsletter.

http://sei.vrafoundation.org/index.html
The Art Libraries Society/North America (ARLIS/NA) and the Visual Resources Association Foundation (VRAF) are pleased to announce that the 2012 Summer Educational Institute for Visual Resources and Image Management registration is open: http://sei.vrafoundation.org/registration2012_form.php

SEI 2012 will be held at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor from June 19-22, 2012.  SEI 2012 is appropriate for visual resources professionals new to the 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.

This intensive workshop will feature a curriculum that specifically addresses the requirements of today’s professional, and will include hands-on and lecture modules. Expert instructors will cover intellectual property rights, digital imaging, metadata and cataloguing, and strategic planning. Attendees will also have an opportunity to discuss and brainstorm on a range of issues, from new media and marketing visual resources to professional development and the future of the profession during the interactive session planned for the final morning of SEI.

DigCCurr Professional Institute: Curation Practices for the Digital Object Lifecycle
May 20-25, 2012 & January 7-8, 2013
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC
http://ils.unc.edu/digccurr/institute.html

NEDCC: Digital Directions
June 13-15, 2012
Boston, MA
http://nedcc.org/dd2012/

SEI: Summer Educational Institute for Visual Resources & Image Management
June 19-22, 2012
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
http://sei.vrafoundation.org/index.html

Canada Chapter
Submitted by Adam Lauder (York University)

During the past year we accomplished the following:  In collaboration with the Chair of ARLIS Ontario, Victoria Sigurdson, hosted ARLIS members at Fall meeting; increased attendance of information students from iSchool; members read focused reports on recent activities and issues of professional interest.  Began programming spring meeting; invited Mark Pompelia to speak to members on social media.  Maintained a Chapter blog: http://vracanadaforum.blogspot.com/.  Set goal to increase membership, particularly among VRA parent members and students.

Northern California Chapter
Submitted by Abby Dansiger (Academy of Art University)

The VRA Northern California Chapter would like to introduce our new Chair-elect, Emily Vigor. Emily is the Cataloging Assistant at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, California, and currently working toward her MLIS degree at San Jose State University in San Jose, California. Emily is the recipient of the 2012 New Horizons Student Travel Award, which will allow her to attend the upcoming VRA annual conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

We are also excited to announce that Kristine Branscomb, Visual Librarian in the Art Department at the Santa Rosa Junior College in Santa Rosa, California, is the recipient of our very first chapter-sponsored VRA membership grant. The purpose of the VRA Northern California chapter’s membership grant is to support membership in the national organization for those who have demonstrated a commitment to the profession and to our local chapter. The grant assists the qualifying candidate financially by paying for an annual membership to the national organization and the Northern California chapter.

Our Immediate Past Chair, Karen Kessel, will be co-presenting at the VRA conference in Albuquerque at the Art and Architecture of the Americas Cataloging Workshop, which will take place on Wednesday, April 18th, from 8 am-12 pm. Karen is the Visual Resources Specialist at Sonoma State University in Sonoma, California, and the recipient of the VRA Foundation’s 2011 Established Career Professional Award.

Here is a brief overview from the current VRA conference program of the Art and Architecture of the Americas Cataloging Workshop:

As university art departments endeavor to globalize their curricula and museums expand their non-Western collections, the subject matter may be unfamiliar to many image curators and catalogers working with support materials who have been schooled only in the European tradition.  The presenters will offer a 4- hour primer in the Art of the Americas to address this concern.

To read the full description and register for this workshop, please visit: 
http://vra2012.sched.org/event/1e9c8b3087536f53dbecd8f939f4a251

Last but not least, several Northern California members will be at the VRA conference in Albuquerque. We are all looking forward to seeing colleagues from other chapters there, and celebrating the Visual Resources Association’s 30thanniversary together!

Southern California Chapter
Submitted by Greg Reser (University of California, San Diego)

The Southern California Chapter held its Fall meeting at Scripps and Pomona Colleges in Claremont.   During the business meeting, Greg Reser was announced as the incoming chair and the new Travel Awards Committee was formed with John Trendler and Susan Thalmann volunteering as the inaugural members.  After the meeting, the group was given a tour of the exhibition “Serendipity: Paul Soldner, Artist and Provocateur” at the Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery by registrar & collections Manager Kirk Delman.  The group also toured the Pomona College Museum of Art exhibition “Helene Winer at Pomona” (part of “Pacific Standard Time”) with talks by Rebecca McGrew, Senior Curator, Terri Geis, Curator of Academic Programs and Jessica Wimbley, Museum Coordinator.  Finally, Mercedes Teixido, Associate Professor of Studio Art gave a presentation titled “Working with wHY: Planning a New Studio Space”.  Finally, the group gathered at dusk to view at James Turrell’s Sky Space installation (http://www.pomona.edu/museum/collections/james-turrell-skyspace.aspx ).  Special thanks go to our hosts, Susan Thalmann and John Trendler.

The newly formed VRA/SC Travel Awards Committee selected the recipients of the travel awards for the 2012 conference in Albuquerque: Heather Lowe, Visual Resources Specialist in the Visual Arts Department of California State University San Bernardino and Madelyn Millen, Curator of Visual Resources in the History of Art Department at the University of California Riverside.

There will be two VRA hosted events at the upcoming CAA annual conference in Los Angeles. 

• On Thursday, February 23rd from 12:30-2:00pm “Paint, Prints and Pixels: Learning from the history of teaching with Art” will include presentations by John Trendler, Allan Kohl, Sheila Pinkel, Anne Blecksmith Tracey Schuster, and Joanna Burgess (http://conference.collegeart.org/2012/sessions/). 
• The VRA business meeting will be held on Saturday, February 25thfrom 12:30-2:00pm (http://conference.collegeart.org/2012/meetings/businessmeetings )

Texas Chapter
Submitted by Katherine Moloney (Amon Carter Museum)

The Texas chapter would like to welcome Adrianna Stephenson to the office of secretary/treasurer who has assumed the duties from Julia Deal.  The chapter would like to thank Julia Deal for her years of service to the organization, particularly in the office of secretary/treasurer.  A chapter is only as good as it membership and Texas is fortunate to have great members who participate on the local, state, and national level.