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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This session brings together three case studies on the practical and technical challenges of digitizing rare, fragile, and unusually formatted materials — from combustible nitrate film to century-old newspapers to oversized scrolls. A joint Q&A will follow.
Nitrates: Now or Never Svea Elisha, Duke University Libraries Duke University Libraries is coming to the end of a multi-year Nitrate Digitization Initiative. This presentation explains how the project was tackled, the challenges faced along the way, and insights that may inform how other institutions approach digitizing nitrates from their own collections.
Fragile Fragments: Digitizing Original Early 20th-Century Newspapers for Preservation and Access Sami Wright O'Connell, Boston University Libraries, Digital Ventures Digitization can preserve rare, degrading materials while enabling access. This talk details Digital Ventures' work digitizing nearly 100 fragile issues of The Guardian, Boston's early 20th-century African American newspaper, covering condition challenges, conservation-informed handling, imaging strategies, and quality control practices that balance preservation risks with sustainable digital access.
A 30-Foot Road Trip: Digitization of the 53 Stations of the Tōkaidō Scrolls and Other Emaki Matthew Carissimi, The Ohio State University Libraries Ohio State's digitization of four proto-Manga handscrolls in 2022 led to expanded interest and digitization in 2025. This session covers workflows for continuous-format materials, getting creative with limited space, and cross-departmental collaboration — with practical strategies for precision alignment for stitching, handling oversized items, and managing 4GB+ files.
Strengthening Community Connections in Museums and Archives Bridging the Gap: The Power of Community Outreach in Museums and Archives
This three-person panel brings together professionals from both museums and archives to explore the importance of community outreach and examine how community input helps transform institutions from passive repositories into active community partners.
Panelists will share different outreach strategies and highlight how these efforts increase accessibility and relevance, drawing on successful stories of collaboration between institutions and communities. The discussion will also address challenges such as resource limitations, trust-building, and representation, offering actionable strategies for implementing or strengthening outreach efforts.
Anna Alamond will focus on developing community-centered exhibitions and public programming. Ashley Royer will draw on experience with education, partnerships, and audience development strategies. Lindsey Lutgring will bring expertise in community archives, participatory collecting, and expanding access to archival materials. By bringing together perspectives from both museums and archives, this panel emphasizes how community outreach and partnerships are a key component for the future of cultural institutions.
This session features three lightning talks and one 15-20 minute presentation exploring the practical realities of collection development — from deciding what to acquire, to what to keep, to how shifting formats and technologies are reshaping the process. A joint Q&A will follow.
Strategic Collecting: When Less Is More(Lightning Talk) Malia Van Heukelem, University of Hawaii at Manoa Library This case study reflects on a move towards responsible stewardship of archives. By establishing criteria in a collections development policy and having conversations with donors about what is most valuable for research, this approach improves the user experience — smaller collections are processed more quickly, using less material, storage space, and staff time.
What Do You Do with 30,000 Photographs?(Lightning Talk) Zoe Adams, American Institute of Physics This talk presents the workflow developed, and lessons learned, from culling an acquisition of over 30,000 born-digital photographs into a collection of 2,457 images to preserve at the AIP Niels Bohr Library & Archives.
Streaming Video in a Shifting Landscape: The Unique Acquisition of Ethnic Studies Titles Leticia Wiggins and Vincent Albarano, The Ohio State University Streaming media acquisition has become an increasingly challenging yet essential process within higher education in recent years. This experiential research highlights the acquisition process for pursuing ethnic studies-related titles and includes guidance toward alternative options for meeting streaming video requests.
What's Happened to Our Film Collections? An Early-Research Perspective on the Changing Content of Library Film Collections(Lightning Talk) Ratna Dhaliwal, University of Saskatchewan Has the content of academic libraries' owned film collections changed with the increasing move towards streaming services and subscription content? This early-research talk explores the question.
The Promise and Peril of AI for Visual Resources: Experiments, Tools, and Impacts New technological developments employing artificial intelligence show great promise for streamlining image processing and generating descriptive metadata. This 60-minute panel explores current AI developments, experiments, and experiences to inform the practice of visual resources. Most agree that AI is a double-edged sword — let's explore both its promise and peril together.
Panelists: Thomas Gailis, Corcoran Art History Program Nancy Harm, Luna Imaging, Inc. Andreas Knab, vrcHost LLC Jason Przybylski (he/him), JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services
