Announcing the Recipient of the 2025 VRA Distinguished Service Award!

VRA is proud to announce that a Distinguished Service Award was presented at the 43rd annual conference in Portland, Oregon on October 9th, 2025. 

Distinguished Service Award

Each year, VRA honors an individual who has made an outstanding career contribution to the field with the Distinguished Service Award (DSA). The 2025 DSA was proudly presented to Johanna Bauman, Associate Director for Collections Management, Pratt Institute Libraries. Bauman truly deserves the DSA for her strategic vision, exemplary mentorship, and dissemination of metadata best practices in the field of visual resources.

Many nominators took time to mention Bauman’s metadata expertise, timeliness, and mentorship. Sheryl Frisch wrote, “Johanna’s leadership and oversight came at a critical time when VRA’s cataloging standards were expanding in scope in order to respond to the changes in technology and the needs of the profession.” Similarly, Maureen Burns noted her “significant impact… throughout her impressive 30-year career as an information professional.” Greg Reser echoed this sentiment, writing that “[c]ollaborating with Johanna was one of the most rewarding parts of my professional career.” This is only a small sampling of the many letters of support gathered from visual resources professionals. To sum up with words from Matthew Garklavs, “Johanna Bauman exemplifies the spirit of the VRA Distinguished Service Award.”

Nomination Speech Transcript, Barb Elam and Lisa Gavell

Acceptance Speech Transcript, Johanna Bauman

Congratulations to our very deserving 2025 VRA Awards recipient and sincere thanks to her thoughtful nominators!