Charge: To advocate for and promote standard descriptive practices in digital resources collections that facilitate the management, organization and exchange of information by means of maintaining and supporting the documentation of the various products and tools available, as well as providing user support to a global community.

Cataloging and Metadata Standards (CaMS) Committee

Contact CaMS
CaMS Flyer

Chair: Open

Standing Subcommittees

  • Please visit the CCO Resource Page for more information.

  • Please visit the official VRA Core Website for schemas and documentation and the VRA Core Support Pages for additional resources.

    Subcommittee Chair: Susan Jane Williams, Independent Cataloging & Consulting

    Cataloging and Metadata Practices Survey Report | A 2017 report by the Survey Working Group of the Data Standards and the VRA Core Oversight Committees of the Visual Resources Association (VRA).

  • Please visit the Metadata Deluxe website for standards and tools for embedding descriptive metadata into images of art and culture.

    Subcommittee Chair: Greg Reser, UC San Diego (Retired)

History of the Committee

In 2017, representatives from the Data Standards Committee (DSC), Core Oversight Committee (Core OC), and a CCO task force merged both committees and took responsibility for CCO. Representatives included Johanna Bauman (former co-chair Core OC), Sheryl Frisch (CCO task force rep.), Sarah Gillis (DSC), Xiaoli Ma (Core OC), Elizabeth Meyer (Core OC), and Heidi Raatz (DSC). The VRA Board approved the new committee and charge on November 20, 2017.

Following the Board’s approval, Sarah Gillis and Xiaoli Ma were recommended to the Board as the new co-chairs for VRA-CaMS. This proposal was approved on December 7, 2017.

  • Inactive, absorbed by VRA Cataloging and Metadata Standards Committee

    Charge: The Data Standards Committee (DSC) was established in 1993 to meet the visual resources community’s growing need to manage complex visual collections in the networked environment. Our charge from the Visual Resources Association is “To develop, advocate and promote standard descriptive practices in visual resources collections that will facilitate the management, organization, and exchange of information.”

    Working Groups:

    Embedded Metadata

  • Inactive, absorbed by VRA Cataloging and Metadata Standards Committee

    Charge: To develop and maintain the VRA Core and to support and promote its use in a variety of communities.

    Organizational Structure

    The structure of the Core OC consisted of an Advisory Group that reported directly to the VRA Board and three subcommittees that reported to the Advisory Group. The Subcommittees were charged with working on Core Development and Maintenance, User Support, and Training and Education. In addition to overseeing and guiding the work of the Subcommittees, the Advisory Group worked to endorse best practices and reach out to proponents of other standards and schemas where there is synergy.

    Advisory Group

    The Advisory Group consisted of 5-7 individuals serving terms of two years and initially appointed by the VRA Board. The Advisory Group was led by a chair who served a term of two years. Advisory Group members were intended to be representative of the following constituencies from the international digital library community: visual resource collections; libraries; museums; archives; information services utilities; image software vendors; and image licensors.

    The primary function of the Advisory Group was to oversee the activities of the subcommittees, including:

    Monitoring the metadata landscape to stay abreast of trends, best practices, and recommendations that impact how metadata is created, stored, exchanged, and preserved.

    Interacting with other metadata schema development groups where there is synergy (e.g. MODS, Dublin Core, METS, CDWA, etc.)

    Endorsing best practices to outside organizations embarking upon implementations of the VRA Core that could be widely used by multiple communities, (e.g. VRA XMP info panel that embedded metadata has been working on)

    Giving final approval to any changes to the VRA Core that are proposed by the Core Development and Maintenance Subcommittee,

    Approving and signing off on grant proposals to the VRA Foundation or any other outside funding bodies,

    Providing guidance regarding ongoing activities of the subcommittees, and voting on proposals as necessary.

    Communicating to the VRA Board regarding any Core OC activities.

    Subcommittees

    Core Development and Maintenance (CDM)

    The function of this subcommittee was to collect and prioritize requested changes to the VRA Core schemas and documentation. They presented a list of proposed changes to the Advisory Group and identified the potential impacts on the standard and its users. To this end the group closely monitored any wikis or listservs that are maintained by the User Support committee. This group also reviewed implementations of the Core in software and made recommendations to the Advisory Group.

    User Support (US)

    Members of this subcommittee maintained and regularly reviewed VRA Core documentation (including FAQs), oversaw the VRA Core Listserv, maintained the VRA Core website, and made proposals for new means of communication as technology changes and evolves.

  • The Visual Resources Association Foundation (VRAF) appointed a task force to research and explore options for the continued, sustained, and future development, maintenance, web presence, and administrative structure of Cataloging Cultural Objects (CCO).