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VRA Bulletin Call for Articles: "New Challenges, New Directions"

Dear ARLIS/NA Members:

I am planning a special themed issue of the VRA Bulletin for Summer 2010 with the working title of "New Challenges, New Directions." This an open call for abstracts for article proposals to get as wide a range of essays on as many different topics as possible, both within the arts and humanities disciplines and beyond. I am interested in substantive articles from the collage/university, library, private/commercial sector, and museum communities.

I do not intend this to be a "woe is us" issue. Rather, I am looking for essays that address, positively, the future of the discipline of visual resources and image collection management: where we are going, new trends and developments, new tools, changing demands, etc.

Here are just a few possibilities for articles:

o How is the incorporation of new technologies into the curriculum impacting the VR discipline? How do we support these technologies? How is the faculty using them (a faculty-written article would be ideal here). How do we train and provide training?

o How are facilities changing? How is traditional "slide room" space being re-purposed into new, "learning spaces" that support changes in the curriculum?

o How do we maintain existing levels of service as budgets, and perhaps staffs, shrink? Will this be a continuing trend after the economy recovers?

o How are our patrons' use of images best served within the larger institution? How do we continue to support image-intensive disciplines such as art and architectural history, while also supporting a larger constituency of patrons (faculty, curators, students) across the institution?

o What effect on the VR profession do new forms of "images" have: immersive virtual environments, born-digital artwork, 2D and 3D design models, the moving image? How do we catalog and archive such works? How do we display them alongside the traditional still surrogate?

o How are CAD and 3D technologies being incorporated into the curriculum to teach architectural history? Archaeology? Visual Culture?

o What types of technology do we need to be effective? Are the current generation of cataloging and image databases and image presentation tools serving our changing needs?

o Are the current cataloging and organizational schema and models appropriate for the 21st century image library? Are we overbuilding our databases?

o How do we support our larger unit's mission if that now goes beyond image creation and delivery for teaching? Do we now support technology training? Publication production? Museum documentation? Campus-wide publicity?

o How have the growing number of commercial/non-commercial image databases impacted local image production?

o What is to become of legacy analog collections?

o How do we support changing or new curricula? How has "visual culture" impacted us? How do we incorporate scientific, medical, or social science disciplines' image needs into our activity?

o What can we learn from scientific and medical imaging technologies and organizational schema?

o What are the most effective partnerships within the larger organizational setting? How does organization-wide image acquisition and development go forward in a centralized environment, in a decentralized environment?

o How are our educational needs changing and what mechanisms are in place to deal with this? How is subject knowledge balanced with knowledge of digital technologies? Is the library science/information science curriculum capable of dealing with this?

o Are large conferences still an effective means for professional development as travel budgets shrink and more institutions are sponsoring one or two-day regional symposia on specific topics?

o How do we continue to build a literature for a discipline when the publishing industry itself is suffering its own crisis? How will this information be disseminated during the next decade?

o Will we ever have an institutionalized and sustainable mechanism for shared cataloging, shared images? Do we already?

o How will our existing organizations continue to support our profession as these new challenges arise and new directions evolve? Will they remain viable entities?

o How will copyright and intellectual property rights developments affect the future of the profession?

Please submit a one-page abstract of your paper proposal to me via e-mail by September 1, 2009 ([log in to unmask]). Articles should be between 2,500-4,000 words, not counting illustrations. Final text will be due by February 1, 2010. Depending on the response, this may develop into a 2-issue sequence, similar to "The Digital Transition, Parts I and II," themed issues of Winter 2005 and Spring 2006.

Thank you,
John Taormina

Editor, VRA Bulletin

John J. Taormina
Director, Visual Resources Center
Dept. of Art, Art History & Visual Studies
Duke University
Box 90764
112 East Duke Building
Durham NC 27708-0764

Editor, VRA Bulletin

Visual Resources Association

Ph: 919-684-2501
E-mail: [log in to unmask]

http://www.duke.edu/web/art/

"Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten."

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