Biographical Note
Allan Tyler Kohl has held the position of Visual Resources Librarian since 1987 at the Minneapolis College of Art & Design, where he has also taught courses in ancient, medieval, and Renaissance art history. He currently teaches special topics art history courses for the College of Continuing Education at the University of Minnesota. He did his graduate work in art history at the University of Minnesota, where he was recipient of a Kress Foundation fellowship. He previously held the position of Media Services Librarian and Assistant Professor of Education at Mount Senario College, with responsibility for fine arts collections and reference service. He holds his M.A. in Library/Information Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and received his B.A. and M.A.T. degrees from Beloit College.
He served as President of the VRA from 2008-2010, and on the VRA Foundation Board of Directors from 2007-2008. Since 2007 he has also served on the Association's Financial Advisory Committee. He was recently active in the local ARLIS/VRA committee planning the 2011 Joint Conference in Minneapolis, serving as Tours and Transportation Coordinator, and on the Events and Silent Auction sub-committees.
A member of the Visual Resources Association since 1993, he has a special interest in copyright issues affecting the educational use of images. Since 1998 he has served on the Intellectual Property Rights Committee, currently as Co-Chair. He also served on the first VRA Strategic Planning Committee in 2002-2003, and received the Nancy DeLaurier Award in 2003 in recognition of his Art Images for College Teaching (AICT) website and image distribution project. His location photographs of world art and architecture have appeared in a number of print publications and web repositories, and he has contributed original images and descriptive information to variety of projects including ARTstor, James Madison University's MDID, the University of Michigan's Digital Libraries, the Society of Architectural Historians' World Architectural History Survey, and Princeton University's Index of Christian Art.
Statement of Goals
The Visual Resources Association today finds itself in a position that uncomfortably parallels that of our federal, state, and municipal governments: our revenue sources (income) are not keeping up with our cost of doing business (expenditures). We've seen a decline in our membership numbers over the past several years, the consequence of both long-term changes in the visual resources field and more immediate problems such as the loss of institutional budget support for professional development and conference attendance. The 2007 Professional Status Survey noted how many of our members are nearing the latter stages of their careers; at the same time, the influx of new members is not keeping pace with natural attrition.
Our members today expect more, and better, benefits such as electronic publications, Basecamp communication and shared documents services, or SCHED tools for updating and accessing conference information; yet, understandably, no one is eager to pay higher membership dues or conference registration fees – our two principal sources of income. There are further strategies that would allow to us to work smarter, and with greater efficiency, as we continue to balance carefully our income sources with our expenditures. We can continue to develop our close partnership with the VRA Foundation, especially if our members are willing to propose and actively participate in projects that tap into potential sources of external funding. We can also consider more regular and frequent joint conferences with our ARLIS/NA colleagues, through which the higher number of overall attendees would offer better prospects for holding profitable conferences.
In a time of rapid technological transformation, economic uncertainties, and career repositioning and redefinition, the Visual Resources Association is for many of us both our professional family and an important part of our personal support system: it provides a venue in which we encourage and facilitate shared initiatives, seek and offer solutions to each other's problems, and celebrate our successes large and small. But there's still room for many more of us around the table; one of our most important goals should be to find more ways of inviting others to join our ranks, demonstrating our ongoing value to their careers, and making it possible for them to share in our common endeavors and benefits.
Having spent the years from 2007-2010 serving on the Executive Board as President-Elect, and then as President, plus a following year as Past-President heavily involved in planning for the 2011 Joint Conference in Minneapolis with our ARLIS/NA colleagues, I am fully cognizant of the volume of work required of an Association officer. While I am not overly anxious to resume a second, unpaid, part-time job, I am also uncomfortably aware, having now served for the two most recent election cycles on the Nominating Committee, how difficult it has become to persuade individuals to accept candidacies for Board service. Indeed, I am concerned that the Association may be facing something approaching a leadership crisis in this regard. We will find it difficult as an organization to realize the positive vision set forth in our Strategic Plan unless more of us are willing to help with the lifting. Wanting to set a positive example, and finding myself in a good personal and professional position to undertake this responsibility, I ask for your endorsement of my candidacy as your next Treasurer.
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