VRA Southeast Regional Chapter Meeting Minutes

March 6th, 2006, VRA-24 Annual Conference, Baltimore, Maryland

Present: Emy Decker (Chair), Martine Sherrill (Wake Forest), Macie Hall, Kathe Albrecht, Tina Updike, Barbara Brenny, Joanne Rathman, Joy Robinson, Mary Alexander, Jenna Duncan, John Tilford, Mary O’Neil.

Emy Decker began the meeting with introductions. She then read the minutes from the SE Chapter start-up meeting at the SECAC conference in Little Rock, Arkansas, October 2005. After acknowledging the minutes, the group then discussed the process of chapter formation. To form a chapter, the group will need to formally petition the VRA Executive Board (probably before the midyear Board meeting in July) and forward the names of two officers and a set of chapter bylaws. For the bylaws, we will need to decide on a dues structure. We discussed possible levels of $10 or $15 per year and settled on $10 per year as a good starting point, a level that would be relatively easy for all members to afford. We then discussed guest policy, with the understanding that chapter members must be members in good standing of VRA, but we could allow guests to attend chapter meetings. Guests could pay a fee to attend those meetings in which costs are covered by membership dues. Many VRA chapters have some guest policy in place.

Emy sent a list of names and email addresses around the room. This list included contact information for those colleagues who have expressed an interest in the chapter formation. Those present made certain they were included on the list. Those on the list will receive all the news about the chapter as it develops.

We then had a discussion about developing chapter bylaws. Emy explained that the bylaws draft that John Taormina had sent her, which used the template from the VRA chapter leadership web site was fairly simple and generic. To draft the SE chapter bylaws, Emy will begin by sending out via email the suggested bylaws from John Taormina. The group will then discuss the document and finalize our own bylaws for submission. We discussed the merits of having staggered terms for officers so that there would be continuity in leadership.

We then proceeded with the officer nomination process. Kathe Albrecht nominated Emy Decker for the position of chapter chair and Martine Sherrill seconded it. Emy said that she was willing to chair the chapter for one, two, or three years. At that point, there was a request for other nominations for chair. There were no further nominations from the floor. The duties of secretary were then read aloud from the suggested bylaws and nominations were requested from the floor. There was further discussion about the fact that the secretary should attend all meetings, so minutes could be taken, but it was decided that it is common practice for the chapter secretary to appoint a minutes-taker for those meetings the secretary is unable to attend. The length of term was also discussed, with the idea raised by Kathe Albrecht that the first secretary could serve for a one-year term if the chair was going to serve for two, thus commencing the staggered elections structure immediately. At that point Mary Alexander volunteered to run as secretary.

Following the nominations, there was discussion about the upcoming SECAC venue in the fall. It was agreed that a SE chapter meeting will take place during that conference, which will be held in Nashville, TN, October 25-28, 2006. On behalf of the chapter and the VRC component of SECAC, Emy has submitted a proposal for an “Ask The Experts” session for that conference. In the proposal, she asked to be scheduled on the Friday of the SECAC conference. Although originally suggested as a luncheon event, Michael Aurbach (SECAC Conference Chair) is already developing several lunch events, so the VRC session will be slotted most likely in the afternoon. Emy should hear back from SECAC soon about whether the proposal has been approved. For the submission, Emy sent in a fairly open proposal, which did not include a specific number of “experts.” Macie Hall and Jan Van Rensselaer will both participate. Joanne Rathman has a digital specialist she would also like to include. We talked about our audience at SECAC, which is essentially similar to a regional College Art Association (art historians, studio artists, visual resources curators). Mid-America CAA is also meeting at SECAC. The VRC group has tried for the past several years to gear its sessions to information important to artists and art historians and to feature ways that visual resources curators can help navigate the digital world. The tentative schedule for the VRC component will be Thursday afternoon at Joanne Rathman’s visual resources center at Vanderbilt, with a roundtable discussion (topic yet to be selected) followed by a tour of the Vanderbilt facility. We will need to select a roundtable topic soon. The Ask The Experts session would be the following afternoon. The chapter business meeting could be fit in during that Friday schedule.

Tina Updike then gave an overview of how she envisions the relationship between the new VRA SE chapter and the VRC component of SECAC. Tina has served as VRC chair for 25 years in the SECAC organization. Basically, the visual resources curators are a special interest group within SECAC and it is not specifically a VRA group. The SECAC-VRC group started because of Tina’s interest in meeting with other curators in the region. In 1975 she decided to propose a VR session at the following SECAC conference. Three people came to that first VRC session at SECAC in 1976. Over the years Tina has scheduled guest speakers, brought in Getty staff to talk about the “new” vocabularies they were developing, and put together sessions of interest to her VRC colleagues. Tina explained that it has become harder and harder for her to continue in this leadership role, so she is hopeful that VRA SE could sponsor sessions at SECAC in the future. For the Nashville conference, she suggested contacting the Midwest VRA chapter, as they might be interested in coming to Nashville for SECAC. Tina is looking at the new SE chapter as a way to assist with SECAC VRC programming.

Emy explained that we do not always need to have our SE chapter fall meeting at the SECAC venue. But while the chapter is young, we can certainly use SECAC as a starting point for the fall meetings. It is an obvious connection and a good place to start. It is generally felt that we will maximize our chapter attendance if we hold a meeting in Nashville. Later on we can discuss doing independent meetings in the fall.

We then talked about identifying areas of interest for the SECAC Ask the Experts session. Copyright, building personal collections, Power Point, scanning, technical specs, digital photography, MDID2, commercial resources, Adobe Photoshop, open-source resources, and Picasa2 were all suggested.

In response to a question from the floor, Emy explained that there are eleven states in the southeast area of the United States that are not currently represented by VRA chapters. She included colleagues in all those states in her emails about chapter formation. She has gotten responses from colleagues in most of those states. We will keep the chapter that broad for now, and hope that those who are not able to travel to regional meetings because of lack of funding may be able to host meetings periodically.

We then held an election by voice vote for the new officers of the SE chapter. Martine Sherrill served as teller and Emy Decker and Mary Alexander left the room during their respective vote. Emy Decker was elected as new SE chapter chair. Mary Alexander was elected as SE chapter secretary. Both were elected unanimously by the members present. Emy and Mary were congratulated on their election to office. Mary Alexander will serve a one year term (2007). Emy will serve a two year term (2007, 2008). They both agreed to begin their terms immediately following the approval of the Board for chapter establishment. It is hoped that this will occur shortly after the midyear Board meeting in July 2006. It was further decided that dues would not be collected until later in the year, for the calendar year 2007.

The meeting was adjourned at approximately 1:45.