VRA Conference 2021

In March, I attended the annual Visual Resources Association conference, which was a virtual event. After a year of doing many things online, it felt fairly natural to return to my screen for the conference. It’s definitely more challenging making organic connections with others in this format, but I do appreciate that the organizers encouraged attendees to contribute to community notes documents and that most sessions were recorded. It can be difficult retaining all the information presented at events like this one, so I’m glad I can have materials to turn back to at a later date. 

The sessions I attended were great, and I was drawn in particular to those that centered people in the archives. The first of these was titled Cash Rules Everything Around Me:

“[this session] will gather a diverse range of GLAM professionals to discuss financial/compensation transparency and how it relates to the field. It will generate a fruitful discussion surrounding compensation at various points in one’s career and across the field at large. Everyone is encouraged to attend. Students and emerging professionals, in particular, will leave feeling empowered with strategies to navigate employment, and managers/administrators will gain insight into potential discrepancies and inequities.”

The conversation was moderated and organized by two members of the Equitable Action Committee and two additional members of the VRA. They began by presenting findings from a survey sent out to visual resources professionals regarding education and training, job advancement, pay and benefits, among other practical aspects of working in this field. Those who participated in the survey also had the opportunity to pass along advice to emerging professionals, and excerpts were shared during the session. The results of that survey can be found in the presentation slide deck. Next, a panel of folks with a lot of experience working in the field discussed their career paths, strategies for getting promotions and raises, and general tips on navigating employment in difficult times. There was a ton of helpful content shared, some of the notes I jotted down are below.

• Document anything you do that benefits work; this includes overtime, special projects, and professional development. This documentation can come in handy when asking for a promotion, raise, better benefits, and/or applying for new jobs.

• Start salary conversations before the end of fiscal year. Think of annual reviews as an opportunity for negotiation.

• Present salary justification information as a one page briefer to both your boss and HR.

• Prepare a script for discussing salary and benefits for a job offer. The script could include: thanks, here’s what I bring, here’s what my research has told me about what’s fair for a salary, maybe 1-3 more things in addition to salary if she isn’t asking for a lot more money (ex: 5 extra vacation days), “what are your thoughts on this?”

• Lots of public institutions have accessible databases where you can look at salaries for people with your job title or for the job title you are applying for. This is a valuable tool when you negotiate for a starting salary or raises.

• If a salary or salary range isn’t posted, ask for that information when scheduling an interview, as it wastes everyone’s time if there’s a misunderstanding about this.

• Talk to peers at your current institution (similar educational requirements, responsibility) and compare numbers to understand your current salary and benefits situation better.

• Research a potential employer and use professional networks to learn more. This can help you decide if the position might be a good fit and if you’ll receive adequate compensation.

• Negotiation strategies in COVID world: think about non-compensation things you can ask for - days off, flex schedule, etc

• Financial literacy is important especially if you don’t have much experience with it. Take advantage of any financial planning info provided through work

At conferences, it often feels like there’s a focus on the work professionals do, so it was a nice change of pace to see the focus shift to those doing the work. The field of visual resources is nothing without those doing the labor. I’m grateful for the folks who organized this session, and it seemed that those who attended were also glad to have a platform to talk about these issues.

Allie Scholten and a slide from her presentation ‘Remediating Records: Critical Cataloging and Keywork Reparation’ during the Emerging Voices Lightning Round session.

I also really enjoyed the Emerging Voices Lightning Round Session, organized the Visual Resources Emerging Professionals Committee, which:

“provides emerging professionals in the visual resources field and related, the opportunity to present topics from exceptional coursework, such as a master's thesis, or topics with which they are engaged early in their professional life. Emerging professionals are defined as either students in programs leading to a career in visual resources or related, or those within 10 years of the start of their career. Topics presented reveal new ideas as well as different ways of thinking about established concepts. Speakers will give the conference attendees a glimpse of interests and current discourses of the newest VRA members.” 

The slide deck for the five presenters can be found here. The emerging professionals who spoke were:

• Hilary Wang - Findings: A Survey on the State of Web Accessibility in Archives and Special Collections

• Cassie Tanks - “Can You Hear Me OK?”: Launching a Story Based Archive During COVID-19

• K. Sarah Ostrach - Photos from Taipei in Washington, DC: Processing a Chinese Collection at the National Gallery of Art

• Allie Scholten - Remediating Records: Critical Cataloging and Keywork Reparation

• Jack O'Malley - Protecting Employment and Building Capacity During a Crisis

All of the presentations were engaging. Even though I’m only barely out of the “emerging professionals” category, I still found it interesting to see what areas of the profession are being pushed and pulled - all for the better. In this lightning round too, there was a focus on people in archival settings, both those doing the work and those using the visual resources materials. I hope this focus propels the field forward.

Steven De'Juan Booth as the keynote speaker, sharing one image of President Obama and visitors to the Oval Office, part of the Obama Presidential Library collection.

The keynote session was titled the Afterlife of What We Archive, and it was presented by Steven De'Juan Booth:

“an archivist, researcher, and co-founder of The Blackivists, a collective of trained Black memory workers ​who provide expertise on archiving and preservation practices to communities in the Chicagoland area. His work and research interests include analog and born-digital audiovisual materials, Black cultural heritage preservation, community archives, and digital scholarship. He is currently the archivist/project manager of the Johnson Publishing Company Archive for the Getty Research Institute and the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture.

In 2020, Steven co-edited with Stacie Williams Loss/Capture, an editorial project exploring the state of Black cultural archives in and beyond Chicago, presented by Sixty Inches From Center, a Chicago-based arts publication and archiving initiative. ​He is currently working on a book project with Barrye Brown documenting the contributions and impact of African American archivists in SAA. He is also researching Black LGBTQIA spaces and newsletters published in the Midwest as sites and sources of knowledge production and sharing.  

Steven is part of a long lineage of Black information professionals who have matriculated from Morehouse College (BA in Music) and Simmons College (MS in Library Science). You can read more about his work on his website at http://www.stevendbooth.com/.”

He spoke about his journey to working in archives and how his experience working in the field has shaped his perception of what archives are and can be. I was drawn to his assertion that archives are as much about relationships (with donors, subjects, users, communities, fellow archivists) as they are about stuff - archives are about connection. This connection comes into play intrapersonally, and between individuals and their history and community. As such, radical empathy is key in archives. Archivists need to learn how to better talk to our communities in order to do this. We’re good at talking to other archivists but can’t always bridge the gap with folks who don’t have training in this field. And we need to spend more time listening with the understanding that sometimes users want to be heard without needing a concrete thing from the archives. He told some amazing stories about connecting with patrons to the Obama Presidential Library which clearly illustrated how to embrace this person-centered approach to the work. His talk was inspiring.

Kate Thornhill and a slide from her presentation ‘Decolonizing knowledge within Afro-Indigenous traditions‘ in the session Power and Respect: Giving Back IPR Rights to Vulnerable Communities.

The last session I’ll write about is Power and Respect: Giving Back IPR Rights to Vulnerable Communities:

“How can intellectual property rights be leveraged, documented, and framed in order to hold up the rights of vulnerable communities, provide repatriations to them, and ensure their data security? As curators, archivists, and librarians who participate in documenting future histories and hidden histories, how do we include marginalized communities into the documentation of their own visual media histories? For this VRA 2021 conference session, presenters who work in archives, digital scholarship, and museums will share techniques, methodologies, and policies that consider vulnerable communities ownership of intellectual property rights when building digital archives, digital collections, and digital humanities projects.”

A panel of four presenters discussed projects and work that navigated the boundaries of creation and ownership. These speakers were: Kate Thornhill on decolonizing knowledge within Afro-Indigenous traditions, April Hathcock on the Femifesto project, Meredith Hale on the Voices out loud project, and IP manager at San Francisco Museum of Art Sriba Kwadjovie Quintana who spoke about her experiences in that role and working with living artists.

Their presentations and the following discussion underscored how archivists and visual resources professionals need to - and in many cases are - shift away from the idea of our institutions as benevolent and rightful owners of all knowledge. Not all knowledge can and should be acquired, described, and be made accessible to all users. The wishes of creators and subjects of materials should always be centered, above the right of users’ access, especially when it comes to systemically, historically marginalized groups. I was drawn to the three pillars of the Femifesto project, as a means of summarizing what this type of relationship between communities and professionals can look like: (1) building relationships, (2) ethical cataloging and metadata creation, and (3) responsible sharing and accessibility.

The Q&A session at the end of the presentations resulted in some interesting dialogue around navigating care with creators and communities while working in institutional settings that are often more rigid, and how to handle individuals and communities in cases where legal protections are no longer in place. The panelists underscored that we operate in colonialist, capitalist systems - both at work and in our broader society. They stressed that we must acknowledge these realities, be transparent about processes and limitations, build trust and relationships, advocate for these groups, explore post-custodial models, and always consider ethics even if the law doesn’t come into play in any given situation.

These sessions and all the others that I attended at the conference gave me a lot to consider as I return to work. Though a lot of these issues don’t come up in my current role, given the limitations of working with an institutional collection, it is likely these scenarios may be more relevant in future positions. And ultimately, the overarching idea that people matter as much, if not more, than the “stuff” in our collective stewardship, is an important one to carry back to any job in this field.

SAA Annual Conference 2020

As with all the other changes that COVID-19 has brought about, another has come in the form of conferences and symposium being shifted to virtual events. I had been looking forward to the Society of American Archivists’ annual conference, which was slated to take place in Chicago this summer. Instead, it took place online. Though it was definitely a different experience than comparable in-person conferences I’ve attended in the past, it was still full of great sessions.

There were a number of sessions that focused on diversifying archives, and I took away so much from these presentations and following discussions. The first plenary from Tempestt Hazel of Sixty Inches from Center dove into artists of color in Chicago and the grassroots effort of the organization to amplify, advocate for, and archive the work of these communities. Hazel spoke to the long tradition of gatekeeping in archives and the need to break down these barriers in order to collaborate with individuals often underrepresented in traditional repositories. I absolutely loved one of her closing thoughts that we should all work to create “a future that works for all of us not just some of us.”

I also attended the session ‘Beyond Diversity Initiatives: Nontraditional and Student-centered Approaches to Recruiting BIPOC into Archives and Special Collections Librarianship,’ which was described as following:

The purpose of this pop-up session is to discuss how Special Collections and Archives departments in academic libraries can provide mentorship and viable/meaningful professional development opportunities for BIPOC. Despite the growing focus on diversity and recruitment by library schools and institutions like SAA, ALA, ACRL among others, BIPOC not only remain underrepresented in the field, but many continue to encounter barriers within library cultures. As many diversity initiatives often focus on current LIS students or those with expressed interest in the profession, this panel will discuss how institutions can leverage their strengths to build and foster diversity programs aimed to recruit prospective undergraduate and graduate students, and library staff and student workers into the profession.

Based on critical pedagogy, and nontraditional and student-centered approaches, the Cal State LA Special Collections & Archives Student Assistant Program is designed to support and mentor students with potential in the field. Cal State LA is one of the largest and most diverse campuses in the CSU system and is uniquely positioned to recruit students into the profession by embedding community-centered archival practices into primary source instruction, outreach and reference services, and the library student worker experience. Topics discussed by the panelists will include: fostering and mentoring students; intentional engagement; student outreach; developing student agency; and the panelists' personal experiences navigating the profession.

The presenters provided some contextual information about the field, and the stubborn pattern of archivists being predominantly white. They outlined how they are working to welcome more BIPOC students to the profession through the Special Collections & Archives Student Assistant Program. They designed this experience to be student-centered and led, constructivist in pedagogical approach, with an emphasis on mentorship and creating tailor-fit projects. The idea presented that we need to implement diversity intentionally and as a priority, beyond just our mission statements, really resonated with me. 

Next, I attended the session ‘Showing Up: Community Engagement Events Toward a Better Cultural Record,’ which featured speakers from a number of institutions and addressed the ways in which repositories can engage with their local communities:

Increasingly, archives venture outside their walls to engage with community partners to create and amplify records of groups whose stories hadn't been previously collected. While building these collaborative relationships is time-consuming and demanding, it is imperative and rewarding too. This panel will explore the centrality of community partnerships in the diversification of the archival record, featuring programs that have hosted grant-funded community engagement activities to create and collect documentation of historically underrepresented groups.

Included were discussions about how an Indianapolis repository connected with African American communities in the area to form a new digital collection showcasing the community’s history, how a repository at a university in Northwest Ohio forged new ties with the Islamic community to bolster that collecting area, and a collaboration between the American Indian Center and a partnering university to support the AIC’s archive. Each of the presenters provided information on both the ways in which they grew these partnerships, and logistical and practical aspects of the work (copyright, digitization equipment, workflow, etc). Given the long history of archival repositories either excluding non-dominant cultures or taking materials from these communities with paternalistic intentions, it was refreshing to hear how some archivists are approaching these relationships differently today. Co-creation and co-ownership can and should be at the core of this work.

SAA also organized a ‘Diversity Forum: Black Lives and Archives Strategy Session,’ which was described as follows:

The Council of the Society of American Archivists released a statement on June 2, 2020, in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. The Council unanimously condemns harassment and violence against the Black community in this statement and calls for a space “for constructive discussion toward progressive change in the archival profession and true inclusivity of the archival record…” The 2020 Diversity Forum, hosted by SAA’s Diversity Committee, seeks to provide a collective space for SAA members to reflect on the statement and brainstorm ideas about creating change from top to bottom within SAA, with a particular emphasis on ensuring accountability to reduce harm to Black and brown people and begin repairing centuries of violence committed against Black people in our society and in our profession.

During the session, we split into groups and addressed specific paragraphs within the SAA’s statement. We were asked to consider: (1) what actions can you imagine in support of this statement, (2) what resources (time, labor, money) are needed to accomplish change in this area, and (3) what would accountability look like. Support for BIPOC archivists in the form of honorarium or other payments, bolstering of peer groups, and tailored training for coping in predominantly white spaces all surfaced as ideas to support the paragraph we reviewed. The group also identified the necessity of training for white archivists on white privilege and white supremacy, as well as active anti-racist work within the field. Our group also thought that best practices and revised standards could play a role as it related to credentialing in the field, and to core aspects of archival work like description. Ultimately, for the archival field to reflect our wider BIPOC society in our staffing, collections, and patrons, this work needs to be a priority, funding needs to be dedicated to the work, and we should include more BIPOC folks in these conversations to help us figure out how to go about doing this. 

I attended a number of other sessions, and have barely begun scratching the surface of the dozens of asynchronous sessions SAA released for the conference. While I miss having been able to experience this event live and in person, I’m glad that folks were still able to come together and to do so safely. Given the other crises we collectively face, especially racial justice, it was heartening to see speakers address issues head-on. There is no simple fix to any of the challenges we face in this professional field or beyond, but I hope conferences like this one can be the spark or support individuals need to carry out this work in their repository and community.

College Art Association 2020 conference

The College Art Association (CAA) held its annual conference in Chicago this year, and I was one of the fortunate staff who was able to attend from my museum. While many of the sessions were geared more towards those working in academia - especially college professors in arts and art history - I went to a number of sessions that dealt with photography, archives, and technology.

The role of photography in Los Angeles’ redevelopment

The first such session was entitled ‘Documenting Community Change,’ which addressed tension between renewal and preservation through a photographic lens. There were four panelists who presented - Documenting Urban Change as a Civil Wrong: A Case of Photographic Evidence in the Construction of the New York City Subway; Framing the Formless: Photography’s Urban Renewal in 1940s Los Angeles; A Pioneering Experiment: Documenting Urban Renewal in Hyde Park, Chicago; and The Bottom: The Interstate and Highways Defense Act & Segregation in Baton Rouge. The first presentation provided a wonderful early case study of how photography can be used in the court of law. The transcripts of the court proceedings underscored how photography may be conceived as evidence, as facts, and how subjectivity and creativity may obscure this objectivity. This feels like a challenge we still face today in how we conceive of lens-based images. The second and third presentations looked at cases where photography was an integral - and once again biased - way in which groups (a government branch or a university, in these cases) make their case for sweeping change. In both cases, photography was a tool used to “document” urban blight, and in Los Angeles, photo composites and graphic design then functioned as a stand-in to show what could replace this blight. The final presentation looked at a contemporary example of documenting shifting landscapes. This project featured community participation and demonstrated the power of lens-based media when it isn’t being used to capitalize off its subjects. I walked away from this session thinking a lot about photography, the photographic archive, and how viewers and researchers create meaning from images.

Transcript of court proceedings featuring discussion of the limitations of photography as evidence

I also attended a session organized by the Visual Resources Association (VRA) - ‘Hands-on to Eyes-on: From Material Collections to Digital Exhibitions.’ Each of the presenters discussed the ways in which their institutions have leveraged special collections in classrooms at their colleges or universities. At Minneapolis College of Art and Design, for example, there is an object library of raw materials, replicas, original historic materials, tools, and pigments that art history professors can integrate into lectures. This allows students to more fully understand artwork as objects - materiality, process, creation - in conjunction with intellectual and aesthetic aspects of artwork. The School of the Art Institute of Chicago features a related teaching collection in the form of a textiles resource center - with 400 objects and 2,000 supporting books - and fashion collection - with 1,400 garments and accessories, and supporting videos and books. While these materials are fairly accessible to students, and staff managing these collections are actively digitizing and creating robust metadata to increase access. The last presentation brought in staff and faculty from the University of Chicago to discuss how the university has leveraged its art museum, the Smart Museum of Art, to incorporate hands-on curatorial training for students. Over the course of two quarter-long classes, university students had the chance to design and install an exhibit around a topic of the group’s choice, work that included: proposing theme ideas, combing the Smart Museum of Art’s collection for pieces to include, and generating interpretive text. The students functioned as a curatorial cohort and worked directly with museum staff on all aspects of the exhibit. It was fascinating to hear about the collaboration - the ways in which the museum benefited from the students’ insights, especially as it related to how objects were categorized in their catalog, and the ways in which the students were exposed to a range of work in the field. It is exciting to think about all the potential in archive, library, and museum collections, and how these materials can be used in educational contexts.

Special fashion and textiles collections at SAIC

Two sessions I attended towards the end of the conference dove into the role of technology in digitized and digital collections. In ‘Beyond the Algorithm: Art Historians, Librarians, and Archivists in Collaboration on Digital Humanities Initiatives,’ presenters discussed the ways in which their institutions are evolving with ever-changing tools and user expectations. They discussed IIIF, machine learning, collaborative projects, and database technologies. Conversations around metadata really resonated with me, especially the challenges of classification, geodata, and how we document gaps in our knowledge. It is encouraging to think about how linked open data may help to some of this end, as ownership and contribution of knowledge can be collectivized. The last session I attended, ‘Defining Open Access,’ evaluated if and how institutions should make available online their digitized and digital collections. There were compelling arguments from a variety of perspectives, and it was helpful to get a better grasp on some of the challenges: the manpower required to do this work; copyright, privacy, and traditional knowledge concerns; inconsistent rights statements in image records; understanding that open access may result in images or data being used in ways institutions do not always like. I am an advocate for making as much information - whether it be in the form of images, text, or time-based media - available to our users, and these presentations gave me a more nuanced understanding of when this may not be possible. 

The conference also included optional field trips, and I am so happy that I decided to make the trek to the Harold Washington Library Center, the main branch of the Chicago Public Library, in order to tour their special collections. Archivist Michelle McCoy provided us with background information about the library and its special collections unit; the creator communities represented in the collections; and the prints, books, and objects she pulled to show us. I had no idea that the library had materials like sculptures, paintings, and miniature models in its holdings, and it’s so heartening to know that anyone can come in to view these materials. 

The research room for the special collections at the Harold Washington Library Center

I decided to attend the conference fairly spur of the moment, and I walked away having learned so much. I feel fortunate to live in a city which is often host to larger conferences like these, and I hope to attend more like this one in the future.

VRA Conference 2019

I attended the Visual Resource Association conference for the first time, and this year it was hosted in Los Angeles. I only became aware of the organization in the last year or so prior, which is odd given how closely the focus and goals fit with topics I am interested in professionally! I am glad to now be more connected to this group, and to have had the chance to meet so many folks through their annual meeting.

My first day was spent attending an intensive course in using the application OpenRefine. This is a free, open-source “tool for working with messy data: cleaning it; transforming it from one format into another; and extending it with web services and external data” (OpenRefine, n.d.). Two members of VRA who had practical experience using the application in their own respective professional settings, led the group in the basics. Using sample spreadsheets they provided, we loaded data, got an overview of the interface, performed basic sorting and filtering functions, and learned how to use functions to automate data cleanup. Most of the actions we took were fairly simple, but it is clear how useful even these basic commands could be. I wanted to take the class to better understand how we might approach our data cleanup project at work, where we face the merger of data from multiple different sources (homegrown databases, spreadsheets) into a new digital asset management system. The workshop helped me to think about how we could leverage tools like this one to work smartly, and how we will need to think creatively in order to cluster data to facilitate automation. In some cases, this may mean we need to perform several actions in order to transform information fully. Though this prospect still seems a little daunting, it was exciting to dig in and try my hand at some of this work.

The next days followed with more traditional conference sessions. The first I attended focused on the digital asset management environment at LACMA and the institution’s use of ResourceSpace. The museum’s Digital Assets Specialist discussed where DAMs is located within the organizational structure of the institution, and how that informs their goals. The Collections Information & Digital Assets (CIDA) team takes a user-centered approach to their work, and they are often acting as bridges between the museum’s IT department, external support services for their DAMs system, and staff. She talked about how this work is akin to translation, communicating between different groups in order to make sure all needs and dependencies are met. A big part of this work is also user education and training, to ensure expectations are realistic. With roughly 300 staff using the system, and over 350,000 assets managed within ResourceSpace, she also stressed the importance of management and governance, and integration with other existing systems (collections management database). As my museum pursues a new DAMs system, this presentation gave me a lot to think about - not just in terms of the solution we pick, but how we think about assets as information and how we can better serve staff.

DAMs management overview at LACMA.

Next up were a series of lighting talks on various projects and programs VRA professionals have recently undertaken. All of these presentations were interesting and showed the broad scope of work folks are involved in in this field. An MLIS candidate spoke about the ‘Information Worlds of Art Museum Staff,’ which appealed to me given my recent coursework in information communities. She set about her research project asking whether art museums’ staff information needs were being met by their current information resources, and what information worlds art museum staff contain. Through surveys sent to participating institutions, she learned that: museum websites are the most common information sources for all participants (intranet, public website) and all staff reported problems using this resource; and that online surrogates for the art object or primary text source were most commonly used as opposed to original resources. This has important implications for institutions like my own, and these findings could be leveraged to create better information resources for communities like these.

Another interesting lightning presentation was given by the Hirshhorn Collection Documentation and Research Manager. She discussed the role of photography in documenting artwork, especially with installation and contemporary artwork. While her institution has staff photographers who create this type of documentation, she posed the question “should visitor created photography documentation be collected and archived?” These type of images reveal how visitors interact with, experience, and perhaps even understand works of art. They can also document how a piece changes over time. While the Hirshhorn does not currently have any policies or protocol in place for the active collecting or archiving of visitor documentation, the museum does apply value to interaction on social media, and they are investigating the topic further. It is interesting to think about the possibilities of allowing more documenters - aside from institution-approved photographers - to contribute to the record of artwork.

The Image Resources Curator at UC Santa Barbara gave the final lightning presentation. She talked about how the UCSB Visual Resource Center underwent a physical transformation as they transitioned away from traditional slide library functionality after a renovation. They adopted a modular design to the new space to meet the needs of their community - professors and students. This included the installation of configurable furniture, a projector, multifunctional walls, multiple new workstations, and a large monitor. They also created space to view and temporarily store special collections, archival, museum collections to be used for instruction at the VRC. The physical space thus became much more closely aligned with the mission of serving the evolving needs of the community.

Kyoto Gardens at the conference venue, a lovely spot to take a break between sessions.

The next session I attended was focused on tools for analyzing art, texts, and films. The panel session looked at the development of various technologies from a VRA perspective: the development of a database that used content-based query for films, a comparison of existing OCR tools, and the application of deep learning to analyze the significance of image library slides. While much was presented as a work-in-progress, these technologies hold the potential to unlock information held within a range of resources. There is potential for VRA professionals to be able to more effectively describe and make accessible their collections, to provide new means for discovery, and to empower users to better analyze collections. It is likely that these tools will only improve with time - as is already evident in the advances in OCR.

I picked the next session largely because I was unclear of the definition of the core topics: digital scholarship and digital humanities. I was relieved when the presenters discussed this collective uncertainty we have about these subjects. They talked about how these disciplines bridge technologies, scholarship, and the humanities to bring VRA collections to life through interpretation. These types of projects range from complex and collaborative, like the digitization and presentation of the American Academy photographic archives in Italy, to more discrete and independent, like the interactive website ‘How to Make a Fake.’ The creation of robust metadata and notations, faceted searching options, use of IIIF, and mapping functionality help transform digitized resources to educate users and tell stories. The last presenter touched on some of the challenges within this domain, especially as it relates to the technical expertise needed to develop and sustain these projects over time. One example that helped illustrate this point was the use of a commercial real estate walk-through application, which was employed in a digital humanities paper to show the recreation of a historic interior in 360 degrees. This experience may need to be migrated to a new tool, should this service ever become defunct, and navigating licensing and copyright limits while attempting to effectively archive and preserve the paper can be difficult. VRA professionals cannot expect themselves to have the answers to all these potential roadblocks, but rather must leverage existing contacts with expertise, and help to bring together potential collaborators. As I have found time and time again in library school - it isn’t necessarily about what you know, it’s about knowing how to find the information you need - which includes our information networks.

The session, ‘Framing Places and Identities: Biographies of Photographic Archives and Their Environments,’ provided multiple perspectives on the complex histories and provenance many visual resource collections. In one case - a collection of photographs of the Salerno ivories at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence - the original physical images, digital surrogates, and new born digital images underwent transformations over time. The newest images were merged with the existing collection, and the collection as a whole was transformed as it became available online and was published widely. A different collection, Foto Arte Minore, has continued to grow over the decades. The intent of the photographer whose work comprises the core of the collection was carried out by the predecessors in his company, and more recently by commissions for similar work by the collecting institution. The relationship between repository and creator has thus become more fluid and active. A third presenter discussed how his institution had to piece together the body of work created by one important local photographer after it was dispersed by his family. This involved scouring sites like Craigslist and Ebay, proactively reaching out to the community, and maintaining lines of communication with potential donors over time. Though not all of the photographs were recovered, the portion of the collection that was reunited helped to tell the everyday story of the Japanese and Japanese-American community in 20th century California. The process also brought surviving subjects of the photographs, researchers, and the repository closer.

Next, a VRA professional from a neighboring art museum here in Chicago talked about ethical image use, or “sure, we can, but should we?” She made the case that as time has gone on, it has become easier to determine copyright but less clear if there are ethical implications for licensing images. Several case studies and their issues were presented: the use of an artist’s portrait rather than their work, overlaying text on artwork in marketing material, using artwork that aligned questionably with new product for the museum gift shop. In all situations, though copyright would permit use, there was the potential for conflict over the choice and context of the use of the images. The presenter stressed the importance of communicating with and educating requestors in these cases, to determine if a compromise or alternative solution could be found. Since she is often dealing with living artists, she also discussed how she often reached out to them to clarify these issues. In response to the question she posed of ‘who should be responsible for making ethical image decisions within an institution?’ she concluded by saying that everyone needs to feel ownership. Hopefully this type of awareness and consciousness is growing in libraries, archives, and museums that license images of and from their collections.

Custom-designed digitization station at the Getty.

The final presentation of the conference took one digitization project from start to final products: ‘Ed Ruscha’s Streets of LA: A Lesson in Digitizing, Organizing and Presenting Visual Information at the Getty.’ The team involved in the project first talked about the origins of the work, namely the access issues due to the format of the materials and the conservation concerns. They worked with a vendor to develop a custom solution to digitize the collection to minimize preservation issues and allow for ventilation, while also ensuring quality capture. For metadata, the team relied on accompanying written notebooks, notations on original housing material, OCR’ed street and business signs, and Google Cloud Vision API to create item-level descriptive data. They were also able to leverage existing GIS location data when they were able to determine street addresses. For both Google Cloud Vision API auto tagging and imported GIS location data, the team had to spend some additional time to perform quality control and assess how accurate and helpful this generated data was in this context. Finally, the team employed IIIF and designed two separate online portals for the anticipated users of the collections: scholarly researchers and the general public interested in the subject of the images (streets of Los Angeles over time). It was helpful to understand all of the work that went into the project like this one, especially as it relates to both expertise and staffing.

Example of auto-tagging suggestions for one of the images digitized as part of Getty’s project.

In between all these sessions, I had the opportunity to connect with other VRA professionals and new friends. We debriefed on what we learned, shared about our work, and commiserated over common challenges. Even though I am new to this community and felt uncertain about my role and fit, I felt welcomed. I will value the personal interactions and connections just as much (if not more!) than all the knowledge I gained through the formal presentations.

References:
OpenRefine. (n.d.). Welcome! Retrieved fromhttp://openrefine.org/

IS&T Conference

During my trip to Washington D.C. this spring, I attended the IS&T Archiving conference in conjunction with visiting two Smithsonian archives. A representative from our department had attended this event in the past, and it’s been on my radar for several years. It was a good opportunity to learn about the trajectory of cultural heritage imaging and archiving on a larger, international scale.

This conference led me to consider my career path and hopes for the future, especially as it pertains to information professions. I originally became interested in the field of cultural heritage imaging as a result of my background in photography. Internships in two museums during college opened my eyes to the world of archival and museum work, especially as it pertained to making historic materials accessible. Digitization has been the focus of my career so far, having worked in three different museums and libraries in this capacity. After taking over some archives duties in my current position, I’ve realized how much I enjoy this related, yet different side of making materials accessible. It’s become clear to me that digital capture is just one aspect of access, archival practice is necessary in order to make data findable, and to preserve this data. I was pleased that the IS&T Archiving conference covered the full gamut of my interests: from digitization to quality control, workflows, metadata, standards, and information management.

While much of the conference focused on the hows of doing the work, the end goal of access and preservation was evident in all the presentations. The keynote was a prime example of this focus on use: the Montreaux Jazz Festival Digital Project in Switzerland was conceived first as a means of preserving unique, culturally important audio recordings, and it evolved into an effort rich in dynamic programming. The collaborative project has resulted pop-up exhibits and experiences utilizing archival footage during the annual jazz festival. The project faces the challenge of complicated rights issues, but staff have found a creative solution in the form of a custom-built cafe for researchers, students, and enthusiasts to interact with the collection.

A presentation by staff at the U.S. Library of Congress was another excellent instance of technology serving end users in making archival material accessible. The National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped within the Library of Congress has been digitizing its Braille music collection for preservation, given the often fragile and rare nature of the material, to maximize space on circulating shelves, and to better serve patrons. Given the fact that this branch serves citizens across the country, digital access has become the preferred method of disseminating music scores. The presenters reviewed their research in the various hardware and software used to effectively capture and output files which accurately capture the original. There is still much that could be improved in the existing technology, library staff made it clear that the challenges in digitization are worth it given the educational value they provide for the community.

The project manager of the Robert F. Smith Fund at the National Museum of African American History and Culture discussed the incredible collaboration between cultural heritage institution and community via their archival projects. Their community curation, professional curation, professional development, and Explore Your Family History Center all connect individuals with history. Staff have organized community digitization projects, which allows folks to learn about best practices for storing materials and digitally archive their ephemera and family photographs. Through professional curation and fellowship and internship opportunities, agency over representation and narratives can be retained within the community. And the Family History Center allows for information professionals to guide genealogical research. The presenter relayed stories about the unexpected social interaction that happens in this space, as long-lost family members have connected as a result of their findings. The work being done as a result of the Robert F. Smith Fund is a prime example of the multitude of ways in which cultural heritage institutions can create value for their patrons and community.

Doretha Williams from the National Museum of African American History and Culture

There were several sessions that focused on 3D capture of historic objects and sites, and the value of documenting our changing world. This is one emerging side of cultural heritage digitization which shows incredible promise in capturing our collective, global cultural patrimony. Historic sites at risk due to political or economic instability, disaster and climate change can now be captured with a high degree of detail and accuracy. While these captures are no replacement for the originals, their use and distribution can help foster a sense of urgency to preserve these sites and it can help individuals across the world learn in a tactile way about these histories. It was heartening to hear a call for a review of file formats, metadata schema, digital preservation and an overall strategy for dealing with 3D capture. There aren’t currently any standards, so this is a crucial concern. After all, long-term access of this data will only be assured if information professionals turn their attention to effectively archiving these materials.

One presentation out of Finland, and another out of South Korea also pointed to searchability of digitized archival material as key as it pertains to access. The Digitalia Research Center has been working to create systems which will accurately and efficiently perform OCR on a variety of typeset and handwritten materials, in a variety of languages. In addition, their solutions are able to analyze the resulting data to determine keywords for processed materials. The research done in the audio archives of the National Archives of Korea reveals the value of speech recognition technology. Though manual intervention is often necessary with automated processes like this one, deep learning is being implemented on an experimental basis in an attempt to improve efficiency and accuracy. Both these automation projects underscore the value of cost-effective technologies that will provide improved access via search, and which will keep up with the incredible volume of archival materials we create.

Anssi Jääskeläinen from the South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences, Digitalia Research Center

A poster about the Echoes project, based out of the Netherlands, caught my interest as it pertains to cooperation and collaboration across institutions and countries. This effort is attempting to link data, and thus archival collections, through one unified system. Based on the Europeana portal of digital collections that pulls together cultural heritage material from scores of institutions across the continent, this system goes one step further to connecting collections across the globe. Through careful crosswalking of metadata, museums, archives, and libraries can add to a growing web of information. The data is transformed to LOD/RDF triples, and users can query or use maps as search interfaces (Netiv and Hasselo, 2018). Projects like this one point to the larger trend of linked data, and the necessity of international collaboration. It is easy to become overwhelmed by options when searching for or browsing information as a result of the sheer number of search engines and information portals. Consolidation of data, and enrichment from making connections is key to help cut down on information overload.

I left the conference considering how we might improve our processes and standards within the digitization program at our museum. This has yielded helpful conversations about progress and improvements, that should help to ensure we are producing accurate documentation of our collections for archival purposes. Beyond these implications, I keep reflecting on the presentations in relation to the value of archives. The physical materials and their digital surrogates have value when they are accessed. Access depends on preservation, searchability, and connections. This is where archivists come into play - they help to transform sheets of paper and digital files. Given the scope of impact within each of these projects presented during the conference, it’s crystallized in my mind the role information professionals play in connecting individuals, communities, and societies to unique, historical content.

Netiv, A. and Hasselo, W. (2018). ECHOES: Cooperation across heritage disciplines, institutions, and borders. Retrieved from http://blog.csuc.cat/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Poster_Echoes_Archiving_2018_final_version.pdf