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VRA-NC Meeting: April 19, 2002, Sonoma State University

Attending: VRA:G. Jackson, T. Levy, N. Hagiwara, A. Le Bourveau, C. Schultz
ARLIS: R. Kammer, M. Manning, E. Crowe, B. Rogers, M. deUriarte, G. Good, I. De Rosa, B. Berry, N. Brailo, N. Bennett Colace

Discussed October meeting possibilities:
Update on CSU project: IMAGE project, consortiums, licensing, RLG
David Rumsey map collection at Stanford
Corey Schultz will check with Stanford & D. Rumsey as to October availability.
Invite ARLIS, MCN

Election ballot: Put out on joint listserve with ARLIS?

ARLIS Annual Conference Reports, St. Louis, MO, March 20-26, 2002

Edith Crowe showed slides from Tour 12: Principia College Historic District and the Architecture of Bernard Maybeck.  Maybeck designed 8 buildings for the college.  Julia Morgan was the supervising architect. The dorms and labs were made of concrete that was designed to look like stone.  A "mistake house" shows the tests of different architectural techniques used in the design of the buildings. 

She also attended Seminar V: Is a Picture Really Worth a Thousand Words?: Information Literacy and the Visual Learner. This session described different learning styles (visual, haptic/hands-on, auditory), and how that might make librarians rethink information literacy.  Most of the information on learning styles will be found in education databases.

Karen Kessel attended Workshop I: Leadership Workshop for Mid-Career Managers in Libraries and Visual Resources Collections. In the past, leadership was task-oriented, and organizations were hierarchical.  Current management theory views a leader as a facilitator, or coach.  One of the handouts included a comparison on how a person's strength could also become a weakness.

Trudy Levy attended Plenary Session I: NINCH Copyright Town Meeting: "The Changing Research and Collections Environment: The Information Commons Today" and Session II: Common Ground: Standards for Cataloging Images and Objects.  The NINCH meeting discussed copyright access, licensing, consortiums, fair use and public access to images.  Jennifer Trent suggested a "public access conservancy", where the public can access images in the public domain, using the precedent of public access to the shoreline, or other natural resources.

Nensi Brailo attended Plenary Session II: The Three V's: Visual Technology, Visual Culture, and Visual Literacy.  Presentations were given by AMICO, ArtSTOR, and Susan Jane Williams of Yale University.  The subject of this session triggered a discussion on whether Art Department slide collections should join up with the campus libraries, since they are moving in the direction of storing and distributing images.  Anecdotal evidence does not support the substitution of digital images for 35mm slides, which are still the preferred medium of most Art History/Art professors.  Technology is seen as a barrier to access, and planning and decision making are in the hands of Information Technology staff, who do not care about the learning curve needed to integrate new software and hardware into daily use.

Giovanna Jackson showed slides of the architecture of St. Louis, F.L. Wright's Usonian House and the Dana Thomas House, the Abraham Lincoln Home National Historic Site, and the Cahokia Mounds World Heritage Site.

Guest speaker Ira Bray, Electronic Information Resources Consultant from the California State Library, talked about digital imaging projects funded by the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA). He outlined the grant timeline, explained the criteria used for 2002-03 projects, and showed some examples of funded projects.  The proposal packet is available at http://www.library.ca.gov/heml/grants.html, and is due by November 15, 2002. Projects from public, private, special, and school libraries will be considered.

Mini Workshop: Project Management for Libraries & Visual Resources Professionals, based on ARLIS/VRA Annual Conference workshop. 

Giovanna Jackson's mini-workshop outlined the stages of project management, and how to organize projects into manageable stages, each with a checklist of things to do.  Each project starts with an idea that needs to be defined, with a measurable goal.  The planning stage identifies resources, tasks, specifications, criteria, and sets up a schedule.  The implementation stage involves developing communication and contingency plans. The follow-up stage evaluates the processes involved in the project.  A list of selected readings was included in the handout, along with a Project Management Evaluation Checklist.

The day ended at the new Jean & Charles Schultz Information Center with a tour of the Women Artists' Archive (http://libweb.Sonoma.edu/special/waa/about.html) given by Karen Petersen, Santa Rosa Junior College, Petaluma campus, and Sonoma State University English Professor J.J. Wilson, who co-wrote Women Artists: Recognition and Reappraisal From the Early Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century, published by Harper Colophon Books, 1976.  Sandra Walton, Special Collections Librarian, showed us the collection of Jack London books and memorabilia in the Waring Jones reading room.

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