----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Begin forwarded message: : Pat Keats <patkeats> : Wed, 15 Mar 95 16:49:53 -0800 [log in to unmask] : 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 [log in to unmask]