The new ACRL Image Resources Interest Group (IRIG) offers a forum for investigating issues around interdisciplinary image support in academic libraries. The group was convened by a visual resources librarian at a university and a digital collections librarian at a liberal arts college, and we hope to pull in a diverse participant group. Image cataloging and metadata is among a number of topics that we expect to address in IRIG.
Though we didn’t delve into metadata at our inaugural meeting in Boston, I want to give a brief outline of the meeting for those of you digital/metadata librarians out there interested in image resources. To kick off the meeting, librarians from three institutions gave lightning talks about services and programs they’re involved with that are targeted toward supporting image resources. Increasingly, academic image support is moving beyond the department-specific level. New configurations for image support range from cross-campus collaborations between departments or units, to altogether new administrative homes for visual support centers within the institution, to inter-institutional collaborative programs. The IRIG lightning talks offered an exciting glimpse into some of the different directions these shifts are taking image support. Presentation slides are also linked below.
The Changing Landscape of Image Resources at Cornell University, Liz Muller & Kaila Bussert PDF
Liz & Kaila talked about the expanded role of the Cornell University Library in delivering digital image resources following the closing of the campus visual resources facility in May 2009. They outlined the suite of services they provide – digitization, metadata creation, instruction and faculty support, equipment lending, and copyright consultation – and shared how they fit into the existing organizational structure of the Library.
Image Use at University of Miami, Shilpa Rele PDF
Shilpa talked about the newly developed visual resources workgroup at U Miami, and their investigations into new potential areas of support for image use across campus. The workgroup has been looking at ways to foster increased support for new as well as traditional image users on campus, including participating in ARTstor’s Shared Shelf program, and conducting a needs assessment on campus.
SAHARA (Society of Architectural Historians Architecture Resources Archive), Ann Whiteside PDF
SAHARA is a new digital image archive that supports the integration of personal collections into a shared image environment, by allowing Society members to catalog and contribute their own photography to the archive. In addition to reducing duplication and supporting collaborative image use, another primary goal of the project is to change how images are perceived in the scholarly community and enable work with visual resources to count towards promotion and tenure. A subset of the images will be available to a wider audience via ARTstor, and these images will be elected through editorial review by an editorial board comprised of both scholars and librarians.