The Visual Resources Association (VRA) is pleased to announce its Summer 2023 Workshops!
Register now for Events Made Easy: A Deep Dive on Developing and Executing Outreach Programs to learn from instructors Tess Colwell and Alex O'Keefe how to implement a simple framework to maximize limited resources, serve your community through events, and generate positive attention from stakeholders. Events Made Easy will be held over Zoom on July 13th and 14th.
Ready for a hands-on learning opportunity? Register now for Our Stories, Our Voices: A Hands-On Workshop on Digitizing Community Archives to learn from instructor Elizabeth Chiang how to leverage digitization as a means of sharing and preserving community history. Our Stories, Our Voices will be held August 25th in person at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York.
Full workshop details and registration links are below. Seats are limited; register now!
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Events Made Easy: A Deep Dive on Developing and Executing Outreach Programs
July 13 and 14th (Two-part workshop held ONLINE VIA ZOOM), 3-5pm ET
Co-instructors: Tess Colwell and Alex O'Keefe
Limited to 40 participants; $50 registration fee
LINK TO REGISTER
Workshop Description:
Hosting events for libraries and special collections is a key part of patron outreach but can be overwhelming and challenging depending on resources such as staff time, funding, and partnerships. In this workshop, participants will learn step-by-step how to use a simple framework to maximize limited resources, serve their community through events, and generate positive attention from stakeholders. This process includes developing a holistic strategy tailored to their specific community, creating a standardized outreach plan based on their institution’s procedures, and ultimately streamlining their programming efforts. During the workshop, the instructors will share scholarship around event planning best practices then walk participants through a series of hands-on, solo and collaborative activities to plan an event using a customizable toolkit (designed using freely available tools such as Google Sheets and Google Documents). The workflow includes audience identification, creative practitioner consideration, budget application, promotional material creation, action item generation, day-of-event execution, post-event evaluation, and thorough documentation to share with administration. Participants will leave the workshop with one complete event plan for their library or collection, a community of event-planning peers for future support, and a variety of resources to enact a sustainable events program at their institutions beyond this event.
About the Instructors:
Tess Colwell (She/Her) is the Arts Librarian for Research Services at Yale University’s Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library where she serves as the library liaison to the schools of art and architecture, and History of Art department. Prior to coming to Yale, Tess worked in a variety of libraries and museums in NYC and was formerly a professional photographer and worked as a photojournalist for the Gazette newspapers, a small community paper affiliated with the Washington Post. Tess holds a BS in Visual Communication from Ohio University, MA in Humanities with a focus in art history from Hood College (MD), and an MLIS degree from St. John’s University. She has contributed to a range of journals and scholarly publications including Art Documentation, Journal of Outreach and Engagement, and ACRL. Her research interests include digital humanities, library outreach, design research methodologies, and visual literacy instruction. Alex O’Keefe (She/Her) is the Research & Instruction Librarian at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s John M. Flaxman Library. As part of this role, she focuses on outreach and programming, specifically collaborating with other staff members and student groups to plan events for SAIC’s diverse creative community. She previously worked at the Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library as the 2018-2019 Kress Fellow in Art Librarianship and later the Arts Digital Projects Librarian, where she designed events focused on community engagement for the Ensemble@Yale project. Alex holds a BFA in Studio Arts, BA in Humanities, and an MSLS. She is an active participant in the professional community, and her full list of professional work can be viewed here. Her work focuses on fostering community in the library through collaborations, weaving critical librarianship into initiatives, fighting mis/disinformation, and all things library outreach.
Our Stories, Our Voices: A Hands-On Workshop on Digitizing Community Archives
George Eastman Museum (Rochester, NY)
August 25th (IN PERSON WORKSHOP), 9:30-5pm ET
Instructor: Elizabeth Chiang
Limited to 20 participants; $125 registration fee
LINK TO REGISTER
Link to info sheet for participants
Workshop Description:
Digitization, by us, for us. This workshop is geared towards community archives, kinfolk historians, and small groups, particularly those who want to leverage digitization as a means of sharing and preserving community history.
In this workshop, we will discuss:
- Cost-effective and open-source software and technologies for digitization projects
- How to navigate small spaces, for physical workspaces and digital storage space
- Best practices for digitization, including examples of scalable workflows
- How to balance these workflows against limitations of time, budget and space
- Resource pooling and how this can help achieve unexpected goals
This workshop will also include:
Demonstrations about material handling and object storage. Participants will work with different types of housings and enclosures that may be encountered during digitization. Attendees will take home a sample starter kit of archival enclosures. Participants will have the opportunity to digitize an item in their own collections*. High resolution image files will be emailed to each participant after the workshop
*Participants are invited to bring a maximum of one object from their personal or community collection. The George Eastman Museum is dedicated to providing a safe-space environment: we want to create a space where all people, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, race, or religion, are accepted and respected. Please be cognizant of the group setting of this event when selecting objects to bring to the workshop. Due to technical limitations, objects cannot exceed the size of 11x14 inches flat, 10 inches in height, or weigh more than 1lb. Please do not bring any objects that contain flammable, caustic, or toxic components. Participants will be required to sign a hold-harmless agreement and a personal-property pass prior to arriving at the workshop.
About the Instructor:
Elizabeth Chiang is the Museum Photographer at the George Eastman Museum. She is the principal imaging technician for the ongoing digitization of the museum collection. She is in charge of maintaining imaging workflows for grant-funded digitization projects. Outside of the studio, she documents galleries and museum spaces using 3D scanning. Elizabeth has a Master of Arts in Photographic Preservation and Collections Management from Toronto Metropolitan University. She is also a guest lecturer for the Department of Museum Studies at the Rochester Institute of Technology and teaches courses in cultural heritage digitization.
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If you have any questions, please send an email to the Regional Workshop Implementation Team at [log in to unmask].
Janice Shapiro Hussain, Workshop Coordinator
Michelle Schierburg, Senior Workshop Liaison
Eva Soos, Junior Workshop Liaison
