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    : Pat Keats <patkeats>
    : Wed, 15 Mar 95 16:49:53 -0800
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       : Call for Papers for 1996 VRA Conference in Boston
  : patkeats
 
1996  Visual Resources Conference - Boston, Massachusetts
 
 
   CALL FOR PAPERS
 
        The fourteenth annual conference of the Visual Resources
Association will be held in Boston, Massachusetts, from Wednesday,
February 21, through Saturday, February 24.  As always, the VRA
conference will be concurrent with The College Art Association's
annual meeting.  The local Boston VRA colleagues have already  found
accomodations and are planning activities for VRA members, We hope
all the activities  will give conference attendees a chance to sample
the varied cultural and other wonderful aspects  - culinary, musical,
literary or otherwise - of the city.
        Proposals and moderators for VRA sessions are needed.  Topics
which have been suggested include ( please feel free to suggest other
topics as well, the ideas below are only suggestions): Do we really
need to digitize our collections?; classroom impact of the new
technologies; professional status and salary comparisons with
professional groups; grants and funding possibilities; shared
cataloging; international issues (Europe and Asia);  upgrading image
databases, and quality control of data collected over the years;
museums and their projects and views of imaging; sessions including
professionals other than VR curators - i.e. professors,
photographers, researchers, etc.; a terminology session - which would
include search strategies to access images, updates on vocabulary
control, how vocabularies work online, etc.; the changing role of the
VR curator; nuts and bolts of professional status - papers given by
those who have achieved professional status, and those still
struggling; intellectual property rights; conservation and storage of
digital images; and collection profiles.  PLEASE feel free to suggest
other topics.
        Roundtable discussion leaders are also needed.  Roundtable
topics which have been suggested include: moving from non-profit to
the commerical sector; new curators general information; copyright,
what are people really doing?; creating in-house manuals of
cataloging and classification; vendors - a more in-depth
demonstration of their products; MARC format - what it is and how to
use it; supervising staff; and soruces of digital images, slides and
videos.
 
        Workshop leaders are also needed, and the suggestions so far
have included: a basic course on how to digitze an image; safety and
health; conservation and preservation of collections; creating
policies and enforcing them in collections; management and
supervising staff; WWW/Mosaic; and SGML.
        Formal sessions and roundtable proposals should be made in
the form of short written statements of no more than one page by
those interested in acting as session moderators,  roundtable and
workshop leaders.  Please send proposals to: Patricia Keats,
Vice-President, Visual Resources Association, 2415 Lake Street, San
Francisco, CA, 94121.  E-mail: [log in to unmask]; FAX:
(415)567-2394.  Phone (415) 567-1848.  Proposals must be received in
San Francisco no later than May 1st to ensure proper consideration.
 
        More specific information about the conference and a call for
papers will be included in upcoming issues of the Bulletin.  If you
attended this year's conference in San Antonio, and have not yet
returned your conference questionnaire, please do so.  Your comments
and suggestions are welcome and will most definitely be considered in
planning the 1996 conference in Boston. Many of the suggestions above
are directly from the questionnaires.
 
Patricia Keats
VRA Vice-President
California Historical Society
 
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