Corey introducing the current VRD officers, who, at the end of this meeting will change. The VRD officers are, and will be:

 2004-2005 VRD Officers

Corey Schultz, Moderator

Jenni Rodda, Vice Moderator/Moderator Elect

Maryly Snow, Co-Vice-Moderator/Vice-Moderator Elect

2005-2006 VRD Officers

Jenni Rodda, Moderator

Maryly Snow, Vice Moderator/Moderator Elect

Sarah Goldstein, Vassar College, Co-Vice-Moderator/Vice-Moderator Elect.

Sarah Goldstein, Vice-Moderator Elect, was unable to attend the conference, so Maryly took minutes in her stead.

Moderator’s Report:

Corey explained that VRD asked the ARLIS/NA Executive Board last year for permission to add a third moderator position to allow for a smoother transition between moderators. We hope that having a sequence of three moderators will enable VRD to undertake and accomplish some long-term projects, in addition to suggesting conference sessions.  Three of the five conference session proposals we discussed last year were included in this year’s Houston conference program.

Corey thanked Dan Nolting, Chatham College, for continuing to be the VRD web master, and for creating such a great web site. Check it out yourself at http://www.chatham.edu/users/staff/dnolting/

 Corey reviewed the sessions that VRD members proposed last year. Corey discussed the VRD listserv that he created in 2004 to facilitate discussion among VRD members. This listserv will be continued through 2005. We will discuss its usefulness at Banff 2006 to decide whether it should be continued. Corey introduced Joan Benedetti of Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). She is writing a handbook of art museum librarianship, and had asked for an author or authors for the visual resources component on VRD-L.  [Add here whether Joan is still looking or not, and if not, who is going to work on the vr component. ]

Long-term VRD Projects:

Corey proposed two long-term projects for VRD. Margaret Webster, ARLIS/NA President, suggested that VRD work with the Standards Committee on these two projects.

1.     Staffing Standards for Digital Imaging Collections

2.     Facilities Standards for Archival Image Collections (both on and off site)

These two projects were the finalists among the long term projects suggested at last year’s VRD Business meeting. At this year’s meeting it was suggested that these two standards could be combined into one document, “Staffing and Facilities Standards for Image Collections”.  Jenni Rodda expressed interest in working on staffing standards for digital imaging collections. Donald Juedes is the ARLIS/NA Standards Committee chair.

Any special funding requests from the VRD to ARLIS/NA need to be submitted by May 30, 2005. Please contact Jenni if you have an idea that you think might be eligible for VRD ARLIS/NA funding.

We were visited by Christine Sammon, Alberta College of Art, to promote beautiful Banff and Lake Louise, Canada, the site for the 2006 conference, scheduled May 5 – 9, 2006 Program proposals are due to headquarters by May 14, 2005. Guidelines for conference proposals are located at http://www.arliscanada.ca/banff2006/program-proposals

There is a link to proposal submission forms at the bottom of the program-proposals web site.

Conference Proposal Suggestions: 

1. Multimedia in the classroom. Who suggested?

2. Continue the Howard Brainen/Trudy Levy workshop. Corey has already encouraged Howard to propose this himself.

3. Trish Rose – How has the visibility of VR collection changed our cataloging, especially in terms of metadata issues?

4. Maryly Snow – DAMS for VR (Digital Asset Managements Systems for VR collections).  Characteristics of. Can a vr collection model its database after University Library purchased DAMS to have full functionality? What is full functionality of a DAMS? Is a DAMS for a VRC different?

5. Maryly Snow –Image Aggregations: Comparative examination of standard features such a searching, retrieval, and delivery. Different methodologies for contributing rights-free images to them Integrating images from image aggregations with local collections. Federated searching. Common features, Which to license. (Wilson, RLG, ARTstor, VTLS, Rumsey, Bridgman, Getty Images).

6. Betsy Peck Learned – Faculty teaching in core programming using. Host of media. Asking librarians, ip issues. Almagest & MDID. New Media in the Classroom. Who handles?

7. Maureen Burns -  Re-Engineering VRC roles as a result of digital technology. Trudy Jacoby, Princeton University, suggested that such a session could build upon the New Paradigms session she organized for ARLIS 2004.

8. History of VR/History of the VR Profession. This needs some fleshing out, a theme. Anyone willing to follow up?

9. Federated versus Aggregated Searching. Maybe new directions in online public access catalogs, use of single repository catalogs for all types and formats of materials. OCLC integrating CONTENTdm for example.

The ARLISL/NA Vice-President, incoming Ann Whiteside and President Margaret Webster, stopped by the VRD meeting. The incoming ARLIS/NA Vice-President is always the liaison between VRD and the ARLIS/NA Executive Board. Margaret announced that Norine Duncan, Brown University, will be the ARLIS/VRA liaison, ensuring that communication between VRA and ARLIS and especially ARLIS VRD is appropriate and timely.  Ann Whiteside reminded us that the conference themes are “Core Competencies” ((see the final report of the ARLIS/NA Core Competencies for Art Information Professionals, March 2005 at http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/afa/pdc/coredata.htm ) and “Strategic Plan initiatives” http://www.arlisna.org/organization/admindocs/stratplan00-05.html

Equally important, Ann encouraged us to define VRD’s goals. Are the two long-term projects that Corey presented above agreed upon VRD goals? Are they consistent with the Strategic Plan and the Core Competencies?

Other Projects:

The following projects are underway. VRD members are encouraged to provide feedback to VRD on these projects, or to participate in them as appropriate.

1. CCO. Trish Rose, UC San Diego, reported that the most recent draft (Feb. 2005) of “Cataloguing Cultural Objects: A Guide to Describing Cultural Works and Their Images” is on the web at http://www.vraweb.org/CCOweb/index.html. The project team invites feedback on the chapters that are available. The final version of CCO is scheduled to be published by ALA Summer 2006. VRD will undertake some sort of coordinated response to CCO.

2. SEI. Summer Educational Institute. Trudy Jacoby, Princeton University, Co-Chair of the ARLIS/NA-VRA Summer Education Institute Implementation Team, reported that once again the SEI sold out quickly, reaching the break-even point in 8 days. The SEI Implementation Team, with Maureen Burns as the other co-chair, is searching for a site for the 2006 SEI. Their intention is to rotate the SEI through the country. This might enable SEI to open up enrollment somewhat.

3. NALSS.  Jenni Rodda, NY Institute of Fine Arts, reported that she and Maryly Snow, UC Berkeley, had asked both boards of ARLIS/NA and VRA to extend the time table of the North American Lantern Slide Survey.  To date, 70 institutions and/or collections have completed Phase I of the survey, accounting for approximately 2,000,000 lantern slides.  Maryly and Jenni plan to revise the front page, write a statement for institutional decision-makers about the research value of lantern slide collections, especially in the history of pedagogy at the institution, encouraging retention of lantern slide collections. In addition, a list of institutions who have reported will be prepared and posted on the site. [After the conference both ARLIS and VRA boards approved the extension of NALSS. Phase 1 to April 1, 2005. Phase 2 April 2005 to March 30, 2006.]

4. History of the VR profession.  Carole Ann Fabian, University of Buffalo, suggested a write up on the Fogg (Harvard) Classification. Who has information? Is there a volunteer to write up a description and history of the Harvard Fogg Classification? Jenni Rodda volunteered to get information on the Metropolian Museum’s system and its history. Carole Ann also suggested that we develop a time line of the VR profession and usage of visual resources for our web site. Is there a volunteer to lead the collecting effort? Someone also suggested that it is time to develop some oral histories of important visual resources curators.  Is there a volunteer to find out who has had an oral history taken, where it is housed, and compile a proposed list of people for us to consider?

5. AMICO and RLG. Corey read an email from the VRA Archives regarding RLG and AMICO. The complete text reads:

“RLG has been working with the Art Museum Image Consortium (AMICO) to provide access to The AMICO Library since its inception in 1998.  The AMICO consortium is disbanding this summer, but RLG is working to continue to provide access to the content of The AMICO Library.  RLG has entered into discussions with the AMICO member museums, has agreements in principle with most of them, and has agreements in hand from about a third of them. Concurrently, we are negotiating with the rights societies to be able to continue to include contemporary art in the database.

Frequently Asked Questions about AMICO:

Q:  What will be different about The AMICO Library after June 30, 2005?

A:  It will have a new name.   It probably will have slightly different

content than what is currently in The AMICO Library.   It will have the same great RLG interface -- and plans are underway for added features.

Q:  Will it grow?

A:  Some of the museums want to update and add records.  We've also heard from additional museums who would like to start contributing.

Q:  Will it cost the same?

A:  Because we will no longer be paying a significant fee to the AMICO consortium, we will be able to reduce the price.

Q:  When will we know the specifics?

A:  RLG needs to have a significant number of museums with significant content before we'll know if there is enough to offer it as a stand-alone database.  We expect to make an announcement by mid-April.

Q:  What does that mean for subscribers?

A:  New subscribers can sign up now or wait until July.  Current

subscriptions will automatically renew.  Any price reduction effective July 2005 will be refunded.

Q:  What can I do?

A:  Let your colleagues at AMICO museums know how much you value having access to their content!

For more information, contact:

Ricky Erway, Digital Resources Manager, RLG, (650) 691-2228

6. ARTstor and AMICO. Max Marmor, ARTstor Director of Collection Development, reported that AMICO (Art Museum Image Consortium Online) will, as an organization, cease to operate effective June 30, 2005. Many organizations are working to continue to provide access to the AMICO content. RLG is one of them. ARTstor is negotiating with the 39 member museums that had originally contributed images to the AMICO Library. Roughly half those museums have now expressed their commitment to share images through ARTstor. While AMICO is assisting ARTstor in this effort, it is a complicated process, one that is well-underway but may take some months to complete. One source of delay resides is that AMICO museums want to take advantage of this opportunity to enhance their contributions by adding new images, replacing inferior images with superior ones, updating cataloging information, etc. ARTstor is working with the Getty to develop an OAI (Online Archives Initiative) harvesting protocol to make it easier for art museums to share current data and images to resources like ARTstor. Additionally, ARTstor is negotiating with the principal artists' rights groups both here and abroad  (VAGA & ARS, Visual Artists and Galleries Association; Artists Rights Society are in the U.S; ADAGP is the French group) to develop agreements that will be international and more "scalable" financially than those that governed AMICO's offerings of contemporary art.  ARTstor is temporaily withholding tens of thousands of contemporary art images, and actively developing new collections of contemporary art, in the confidence that before long they will be able to make these materials available to ARTstor users.

    New Business:

   1. Publication Committee. There are no print publications planned at this point.

   2. Staffing Standards.  Develop a committee to work on staffing standards in image collections. Project fits in with the Strategic Plan core competencies. Staffing Standards for Image Collections.

   3. Janice Woo to look into …….