Organization > Chapters > Great Lakes > Minutes and Reports
VRA Great Lakes Chapter Meeting
October 24, 2003, Allen Art Building, Oberlin College
Hosted by Joseph Romano
In attendance: Chair: Joseph Romano; Treasurer: Astrid R. Otey; Secretary: Jean Koeller; Lesley F. Chapman, Derek D. Churchill, Susan Prince Havens, Dane A. Johnson, Sue Morris, Laura Paris, Carole Pawloski, Joseph Romano, Cara Romano, Arlene Moore Sievers, and Yan Zhou
The meeting began after the arrival of participants and a Tour of the Art Library by Barbara Prior, Art Librarian.
Joseph began by welcoming everyone and we all introduced ourselves. The order of the day was discussed.
The next spring and fall meeting was discussed and tentative plans were made. The spring meeting will be in Portland during the National VRA conference. A room is available for this purpose and it will be looked into for use. A date and time will be announced as the meeting draws closer. Laura Paris made the offer to host the next fall meeting at Ohio University and it will be in conjunction with their bicentennial celebration for the institution. (An added note from Laura; A Maya Lin sculpture garden should be done by the time we have a meeting)
A Nominating committee for electing a secretary for our VRA chapter was formed. Jean Koeller¹s term ends in January and she will be stepping down. Joseph Romano and Laura Paris have agreed to steer this process and serve on the committee and will accept nominations, which will be forwarded for a ballot for the next mailing.
Astrid also reminded us that the VRA National organization has the VRA Chapter Leadership Guide on line at: VRAweb.org/strategic/Leadership/index.html. Anyone who is a member can access this. The User Name is strategic and the password is escher (all lower case). There one can find the chapter position descriptions and how the regional chapters are constructed. Templates for the officers are available.
The treasurer's report was given by Astrid Otey. As of April 4, 2003, the account has a balance of $628.16. There have been no expenses since the last meeting.
A report on the education grant was given by Astrid Otey. Astrid attended the "Creating Intellectual Property Policy and Guidelines for the Visual Resources Collection" workshop led by Georgia Harper, University of Texas System. This took place at the Houston Conference and our national organization provided funds. Astrid explained her adventure of creating a policy for her library and her contact with legal counsel at her institution. She summarized Ms. Harper¹s explanation of the TEACH Act and its relationship to fair use. Astrid also outlined Ms. Harper¹s suggestions for creating policies and cited the general advice given in the workshop. There is a written report available on request. Questions about digital images for the web and policies were discussed.
Membership forms were provided and filled out for the next year. We have three new members: Derek D. Churchill of University of Pittsburgh, Susan Morris of Michigan State University, and Carole Pawloski of Eastern Michigan University.
The attendees were then given a brief tour of the Allen Mmorial Art Museum by Sara Hallberg, Curator of Education. After the tour Ms. Hallberg answered questions and the guests were given time to browse the Collection on their own before breaking for lunch.
The afternoon session began after lunch in one of the Department of Art "smart classrooms." Mr. Romano logged onto his office computer remotely from the classroom and projected his computer desktop through the data projector. He then illustrated how scanned slides are edited and saved in various file formats as well as how to automate certain procedures by using the "Actions" feature in Adobe Photoshop. Actions were recorded for create thumbnails and reformating digital images shot with a digital camera for processing as 35mm slides via a film recorder. The Group then briefly visited the visual resources collection and were shown how a film recorder works by uploading the digital files for processing.
Attendess were then given the option of touring the campus or visiting an exhibition, "Holocaust Series" in the Oberlin College Library.
