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 presentations exploring how visual resources professionals are finding creative new ways to connect collections with the people who use them, from public-facing digital storytelling to classroom pedagogy. Each presenter will have 15-20 minutes to share their work, followed by a joint Q&A.
Bringing Archives to Life with Interactive Digital Maps Presenters from Queens Public Library and Urban Archive will showcase the interactive maps and stories on the Queens Name Explorer and other Urban Archive projects, demonstrating how mapping digital archives helps cultural institutions preserve visual culture while connecting the public to cultural heritage in new, engaging ways.
Animating Access: Copyright-Centered Outreach for Visual Resources While copyright can impose limitations on visual resource collections, it doesn't have to hinder their promotion and use. This presentation discusses how the University of South Florida Libraries' Special Collections framed copyright as a central component of an outreach strategy to promote a collection of heavily copyrighted materials.
Collections in the Classroom: A Case Study in Object-Based Pedagogy This presentation examines a university course built around the central question "Why is that art?" Through faculty-librarian collaboration, visually engaging objects from the collections were integrated into the curriculum to challenge students' assumptions, with results from longitudinal surveys tracking shifts in student perceptions.
Cool Things We Work On Think old stuff is cool? From the weird to the wonderful, come learn about some of the coolest things our metadata, cataloging, and conservation colleagues have had the pleasure of researching and describing. One of the best parts of visual resources work is getting to explore collections that teach us something new — whether they open up unfamiliar corners of history or challenge us because of the nature of the material itself. This session highlights some of the fascinating materials our presenters have worked with over the past year, covering what the material is, where it came from, why it sparked their interest, and what the process of learning about it was like.
Brinna Michael and Chloe McLaren will introduce the world of late 1800s and early 1900s municipal sewer maps, discussing the history of the New York State Board of Health's annual reports. As part of the Cornell University Library map collections, supplemental maps from these reports offer fascinating insights into the management of municipal infrastructure through sewer maps, street profiles, and facility plans — complete with excellent examples of detailed hand-lettering. The presentation will explore how these visual supplements were used to advocate for improvements to municipal sewer works, as well as how they illustrate citizen concerns raised in the "Special Investigations" reports.
Jana Dambrogio, Matt Saba, and Oa Sjoblom will introduce a project at MIT to rehouse and describe a set of 102 binders in the Kamil and Rifat Chadirji Photographic Archive, a visual archive documenting the work of Iraqi architect Rifat Chadirji as well as other aspects of life in Iraq from the 1940s to the 1970s. Alongside their research and aesthetic interest, these materials presented real conservation and physical arrangement challenges. The presentation will introduce the collection and its history, discuss the conservation challenges it presented, and describe how the team balanced principles of conservation with archival integrity.
Nora Davies will describe a recently re-housed and reorganized collection of around 10,000 photographs and prints — the body of work and study materials belonging to Arthur Kingsley Porter and his wife, Lucy Wallace Porter. Arthur Kingsley Porter (1883–1933) was an American medievalist scholar-photographer who taught at Yale and Harvard until his mysterious disappearance in 1933. Lucy Wallace Porter (1876–1962) became the collection's chief photographer from 1919 onward and contributed significantly to the photographic record of art history. This presentation will share the history of the duo and what we've learned about their body of work through engaging with these materials.
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.
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.
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 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
