What does it mean to truly look closely? This year’s VRA annual conference, Zooming In, invites visual resources professionals to shift from the wide view and settle into the details, the workflows, tools, discoveries, and community conversations that define our day-to-day practice.
Delivered fully online, VRA 2026 brings together a rich program drawn from 40+ proposals spanning panels, lightning talks, virtual tours, and more. Whether you’re navigating new roles in your institution, exploring how AI is reshaping cataloging and metadata work, grappling with collection development decisions, or finding new ways to activate and engage communities through visual collections, there’s a session built for where you are right now.
This year’s program reflects both the breadth and the depth of our field: from digitizing ancient scrolls to first-time service management, from reparative description to classroom pedagogy, and interactive digital maps. It’s a conference for asking: what happens when we look more carefully?
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As artificial intelligence tools become increasingly woven into metadata and cataloging workflows, this themed session brings together four presentations examining both the opportunities and the open questions AI raises for the visual resources field — from accessibility and inclusivity to authenticity and professional judgment. A joint Q&A will follow all four presentations.
AI in Moderation: Assessing the Efficacy and Inclusivity of AI-Generated Alt Text for Library Digital Collections Can AI be used to generate alt text that meets standards for accessibility and inclusive metadata? This study uses a vision-language model to describe a wide range of image content, including abstract artworks, comparing AI-generated text with human-created alt text for the same images.
Student-Led Exploration of AI Support in Metadata Quality Control This presentation documents the process, findings, and ongoing questions from exploring how AI tools can support different stages of metadata workflows. Rather than positioning AI as a replacement for professional judgment, this framework keeps catalogers central to the process — investigating AI assistance such as flagging formatting deviations, suggesting controlled vocabulary, and supporting description, validation, and review tasks, with catalogers retaining full authority to review, accept, or reject any recommendation.
Beyond the Prompt: Evaluating AI Tools for Visual Resource Cataloging This presentation extends earlier work presented at VRA on AI-assisted cataloging from images, exploring how different commercial AI tools handle the same metadata tasks. Focusing on consistency, schema adherence, and workflow integration, it offers a practical perspective for catalogers navigating an expanding landscape of AI options.
The Three Pillars of Authenticity: A Collaborative Approach for Digitized Still Images Concerns about authenticity in digitization workflows for images are increasing, especially with the rise of generative artificial intelligence. This presentation shares the goals of the Digital Object Authenticity Working Group (DOAWG), which encourages discussion and advocacy for best practices related to describing authenticity in the cultural heritage community.
This session brings together three presentations exploring how visual resources professionals are centering underrepresented communities in collection development, description, and public engagement — through cross-institutional partnerships, culturally responsive metadata practices, and community-focused exhibits. A joint Q&A will follow.
Collaborative Pathways to Equitable Visual Collections A faculty-initiated partnership transformed a university's visual collection into a hybrid analog-digital archive of Black Canadian artists, culminating in a collection-based assignment that activated the new holdings. This case study models cross-institutional collaboration, equity-driven collection development, and blended instruction, repositioning visual collections as active pedagogical agents.
The Little LGBTQ History Exhibit that Could: An 'American Experience' on Display in Texas This is a pre-recorded tour of an exhibit highlighting activism, community, joy, and violence. It examines the impact of affect on research and archival work through tensions: balancing access and privacy, acknowledging vulnerability with the power of visibility, addressing underrepresentation while mitigating tokenism, and prioritizing community-centered perspectives under "best" professional practices.
The Intellectual Property Rights Committee invites current members, and those interested in joining, to gather and talk about recent copyright developments.
This session features one 15-20 minute presentation and two lightning talks exploring the evolving nature of work in visual resources — from multigenerational collaboration to the unexpected career pivots reshaping roles across the field. A joint Q&A will follow.
Talkin' About My Generation — Workplace Dynamics Among Generations at the Lucille C. Little Fine Arts & Design Library Our arts library includes employees representing a full spectrum of generations, from Baby Boomer to Gen Z. In this session, two members of different professional eras will interview each other about their multigenerational culture, revealing ways to create a successful workplace among colleagues and students with vastly different work expectations.
Surviving (and Thriving!) as a First-Time Service Manager(Lightning Talk) This talk explores the multifaceted role of managing IU's Digital Collections service within an open-source environment, viewed through the lens of a newly minted Digital Collections librarian, sharing highlights from a learning journey including practical strategies for staying grounded, building confidence, and creating sustainable workflows.
Archivists and VR Professionals Turned Drivers of DAM Success(Lightning Talk) When role drift presses archivists, librarians, or VR professionals into Digital Asset Management roles, it changes foundational duties. This talk explores the shift from long-term stewardship to active production, and the opportunities it provides "accidental" DAM managers to utilize their expertise as key conduits in the asset lifecycle.
The Membership Committee is hosting a Powerpoint Party! All are invited to join for a relaxed social event, the virtual version of the Members' Night Out hosted at the last two conferences. Kick back and have some fun with fellow attendees as they present on their favorite niche topics. All attendees will be entered into a drawing to win some prizes!Come ready to laugh, connect, and enjoy a well-deserved break between sessions.
From Curatorial Pedagogy to Professional Development: Skill Building through Student Exhibitions This 60-minute panel examines various models for staff and instructors to empower students learning curatorial practices through hands-on experience, and demonstrates how these programs can evolve over time. Bringing together panelists from institutional archives and a visual resources center illustrates how facilitating student-run exhibitions can be adapted to a variety of contexts.
Sarah Melloy shares two case studies of unique art exhibits curated from materials in the University of Louisville's Archives & Special Collections by students in curatorial studies courses at the Hite Institute of Art + Design (Hite), co-led by Hite faculty and archives staff enrolled in Hite's MA program. In 2024, students drew from the Williams-Nichols collection — one of the largest LGBTQ+ archival collections in the country — to curate Not Yet / Always Been: An Archive of Queer Louisville. The following year, building on that momentum, students curated Doing Americana: Photography, Mythology, and the American Dream, blending fine art and documentary photography from archival collections in conjunction with Louisville's Photo Biennial. These semester-long courses generated further interest in exhibiting with archival materials among curatorial studies students, leading to more formal and streamlined programming for student exhibits developed by archives and Hite faculty and staff.
Caitlin Cooner presents CWAC Exhibitions, an evolving model for teaching curation through an applied methodology. Managed by the University of Chicago Department of Art History's Visual Resource Center (VRC), CWAC Exhibitions gives students and courses the opportunity to curate and exhibit artwork throughout the Cochrane Woods Art Center. Since its inception, the program has produced 17 exhibitions and 8 pop-up exhibitions curated by individual students and art history courses, and has employed students in the VRC to execute them — showcasing contemporary art in conversation with pieces from the Joel Snyder Materials Collection. The CWAC Exhibitions team will soon publish a Curatorial Toolkit outlining the steps and processes of a successful CWAC Exhibition, adaptable for various levels of curatorial experience and different art spaces.
Brittan Nannenga will present examples of student-curated exhibitions and events at the John M. Flaxman Library at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. After a renovation project in 2023, staff in the Library and Special Collections came together to rethink and expand programming for the newly enhanced exhibition and event space. The result was an exhibition proposal process, which welcomed members of the SAIC community, and specifically student curators, to submit ideas for exhibits and events that utilize library and special collections or highlight works related to their coursework or research. Since then, the library has showcased a variety of exhibitions and events curated and planned by undergraduate and graduate students, student groups, and classes. The new exhibition process offers student curators the opportunity to gain hands-on experience with concept development, research and selection, visual display and design, installation, and outreach and promotion–with support from library staff throughout.
Together, these programs demonstrate how archives staff working closely with students and instructors can lead to successful exhibitions while equipping students with hands-on professional skills in curation, archival research, and other GLAM-related work.
Putting It into Geographic Context: Digital Mapping Projects in the Humanities Classroom Moving beyond black backgrounds, digital mapping tools now allow students to ground architectural structures and cultural heritage objects in geographic context. This 60-minute panel presents three case studies using platforms such as ArcGIS and Omeka to create maps and illuminate spatial narratives.
Once upon a classroom, students studied architectural structures and cultural heritage objects in a relative vacuum — outside of a quick map projected at the start of a lecture, black backgrounds and silver tape did little to ground these works in geographic context. As digital maps and mapping tools have become increasingly prevalent, including since the launch of the transformative Google Earth in 2005, faculty and students now have access to sophisticated yet user-friendly digital mapping tools that allow them to explore geographic context and study adjacencies between works like never before. Mapping, storytelling, and digital exhibition tools such as Google Maps, ArcGIS and StoryMaps, and Omeka highlight placemarks and illuminate narratives — from the development of modernist architecture, to photographic depictions of a place over time, to the provenance of a painting. These three presentations detail case studies of pedagogically-focused mapping projects that are user-friendly and easily adapted to the classroom.
JJ Bauer (The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) will discuss transitioning a modern architecture course project from Google Maps to ArcGIS.
Amy McKenna (Williams College) will speak about a project in Omeka, where students build and map a collection of photographs and curate a digital exhibition focused on the depictions of one place in the Middle East over time.
Otto Luna (University of New Hampshire) will describe a project in which students investigate the provenance of artworks by creating an interactive ArcGIS map and then developing a multimedia narrative in StoryMaps.
This informal social session brings together newer career professionals and job seekers to connect with one another. Come share current projects, experiences, and workflows, or simply seek and give advice in a relaxed, low-pressure setting.
Join Sudha Anand from Indiana University on an interactive tour of IU Digital Collections, built on an open-source infrastructure. This session will cover work types, integrations, and surrogate generation workflows, highlight compelling collections and access points, and demonstrate simple, practical ways to bring these digital resources into programming, instruction, outreach, and engagement by leveraging IIIF manifests.
Crafting Connections, hosted by Julia Murphy, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Come meet fellow conference attendees while making a craft in the comfort of your home or office. Let's e-mingle with other attendees, share conference memories, or just chat. This event is perfect for new VRA members, first-time conference attendees, and crafty people alike.
