VRAF Workshop: Beyond Licenses

In January, I was able to attend the rescheduled workshop ‘Beyond Licenses: Integrating Creative Commons, RightsStatements.org, and Traditional Knowledge into Permissions,’ which was organized by the Visual Resources Association Foundation. My new role as digital asset specialist at Cultivate Learning involves managing a variety of rights and usage considerations, and this workshop was a helpful resource for refreshing some existing knowledge I had and learning more. The workshop description:

“Today’s visual resource professionals must understand that copyright is just one element of intellectual property rights and a multitude of “other” considerations that may need to be reviewed when undertaking licenses for reproductions of collection objects. This workshop will provide a baseline review of applicable intellectual property rights, including U.S. copyright law and the fair use limitation on exclusive rights, before delving into a deeper understanding for the potential integration of Creative Commons licenses, RightsStatements.org, and Traditional Knowledge labels with collection objects to expand existing permissions practices at galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAMs). Participants will be introduced to a variety of resources and examples to help guide them and their constituents in making appropriate decisions as they navigate evolving permissions practices, including Open Access initiatives, at GLAM institutions.”

Screenshot of a slide from the workshop, which provides the scope of what the right to privacy covers.

The workshop was presented from the perspective of visual resources professionals in the United States, though some differences were touched upon in regards to other countries’ rules and regulations. The instructor Anne Young went over in detail all the legal aspects of use we must consider: copyright, underlying rights, trademarks, patents, right to privacy, right to publicity, contractual restrictions, and licensing agreements. These issues are complicated on their own, especially when it comes to often murky copyright status with cultural heritage materials. Since Cultivate Learning works with a number of different organizations and grant bodies, copyright is an area I need to dig in more. I also need to spend some time with waivers and potential contractual restrictions, given that the majority of my organization’s assets depict or record individuals, and often minors. There is protocol and policy in place to handle this from the asset creation side of our workflow, and I want to ensure that the same thought and consideration is applied in the ongoing use and reuse of these assets. 

Screenshot of a slide from the workshop, which provides a definition of traditional knowledge labels.

I was particularly interested in the section of the workshop that dealt with some other considerations around use - namely those moral or ethical considerations like sensitive materials and traditional knowledge. In library school, some of my professors spent time discussing how our education and the institutions we’d work in privilege western notions of knowledge and ownership, and how these approaches exclude and fail Indigenous communities. This same issue surfaced in the workshop. As one small part of decolonizing our work, it’s clear that we need to take into account and apply traditional knowledge concepts. This includes collaborating with representatives from Indigenous communities in order to assign traditional knowledge (TK) labels where appropriate. Of course, this doesn’t make up for situations where institutions have acquired Indigenous materials without these communities’ consent, and as we learned in the workshop, these labels should only be assigned by representatives from these communities. But in cases like the one at Cultivate Learning - where our organization is providing shared access and use of a digital asset management system for a tribal community college’s photographs - the application of traditional knowledge labels makes sense. We also learned about cultural institution (CI) labels and how institutions may apply these as a way of inviting collaboration around description and TK labels with different communities.

Screenshot of a slide from the workshop, which provides a definition of cultural institution labels.

I’ve had a few opportunities to learn some basics around copyright while working in the field of archives and asset management, and this workshop was a fantastic chance to further distill and clarify this complex information. Especially since I’m in a new professional environment, it was helpful to review these considerations in this context. 

VRA Conference 2021

In March, I attended the annual Visual Resources Association conference, which was a virtual event. After a year of doing many things online, it felt fairly natural to return to my screen for the conference. It’s definitely more challenging making organic connections with others in this format, but I do appreciate that the organizers encouraged attendees to contribute to community notes documents and that most sessions were recorded. It can be difficult retaining all the information presented at events like this one, so I’m glad I can have materials to turn back to at a later date. 

The sessions I attended were great, and I was drawn in particular to those that centered people in the archives. The first of these was titled Cash Rules Everything Around Me:

“[this session] will gather a diverse range of GLAM professionals to discuss financial/compensation transparency and how it relates to the field. It will generate a fruitful discussion surrounding compensation at various points in one’s career and across the field at large. Everyone is encouraged to attend. Students and emerging professionals, in particular, will leave feeling empowered with strategies to navigate employment, and managers/administrators will gain insight into potential discrepancies and inequities.”

The conversation was moderated and organized by two members of the Equitable Action Committee and two additional members of the VRA. They began by presenting findings from a survey sent out to visual resources professionals regarding education and training, job advancement, pay and benefits, among other practical aspects of working in this field. Those who participated in the survey also had the opportunity to pass along advice to emerging professionals, and excerpts were shared during the session. The results of that survey can be found in the presentation slide deck. Next, a panel of folks with a lot of experience working in the field discussed their career paths, strategies for getting promotions and raises, and general tips on navigating employment in difficult times. There was a ton of helpful content shared, some of the notes I jotted down are below.

• Document anything you do that benefits work; this includes overtime, special projects, and professional development. This documentation can come in handy when asking for a promotion, raise, better benefits, and/or applying for new jobs.

• Start salary conversations before the end of fiscal year. Think of annual reviews as an opportunity for negotiation.

• Present salary justification information as a one page briefer to both your boss and HR.

• Prepare a script for discussing salary and benefits for a job offer. The script could include: thanks, here’s what I bring, here’s what my research has told me about what’s fair for a salary, maybe 1-3 more things in addition to salary if she isn’t asking for a lot more money (ex: 5 extra vacation days), “what are your thoughts on this?”

• Lots of public institutions have accessible databases where you can look at salaries for people with your job title or for the job title you are applying for. This is a valuable tool when you negotiate for a starting salary or raises.

• If a salary or salary range isn’t posted, ask for that information when scheduling an interview, as it wastes everyone’s time if there’s a misunderstanding about this.

• Talk to peers at your current institution (similar educational requirements, responsibility) and compare numbers to understand your current salary and benefits situation better.

• Research a potential employer and use professional networks to learn more. This can help you decide if the position might be a good fit and if you’ll receive adequate compensation.

• Negotiation strategies in COVID world: think about non-compensation things you can ask for - days off, flex schedule, etc

• Financial literacy is important especially if you don’t have much experience with it. Take advantage of any financial planning info provided through work

At conferences, it often feels like there’s a focus on the work professionals do, so it was a nice change of pace to see the focus shift to those doing the work. The field of visual resources is nothing without those doing the labor. I’m grateful for the folks who organized this session, and it seemed that those who attended were also glad to have a platform to talk about these issues.

Allie Scholten and a slide from her presentation ‘Remediating Records: Critical Cataloging and Keywork Reparation’ during the Emerging Voices Lightning Round session.

I also really enjoyed the Emerging Voices Lightning Round Session, organized the Visual Resources Emerging Professionals Committee, which:

“provides emerging professionals in the visual resources field and related, the opportunity to present topics from exceptional coursework, such as a master's thesis, or topics with which they are engaged early in their professional life. Emerging professionals are defined as either students in programs leading to a career in visual resources or related, or those within 10 years of the start of their career. Topics presented reveal new ideas as well as different ways of thinking about established concepts. Speakers will give the conference attendees a glimpse of interests and current discourses of the newest VRA members.” 

The slide deck for the five presenters can be found here. The emerging professionals who spoke were:

• Hilary Wang - Findings: A Survey on the State of Web Accessibility in Archives and Special Collections

• Cassie Tanks - “Can You Hear Me OK?”: Launching a Story Based Archive During COVID-19

• K. Sarah Ostrach - Photos from Taipei in Washington, DC: Processing a Chinese Collection at the National Gallery of Art

• Allie Scholten - Remediating Records: Critical Cataloging and Keywork Reparation

• Jack O'Malley - Protecting Employment and Building Capacity During a Crisis

All of the presentations were engaging. Even though I’m only barely out of the “emerging professionals” category, I still found it interesting to see what areas of the profession are being pushed and pulled - all for the better. In this lightning round too, there was a focus on people in archival settings, both those doing the work and those using the visual resources materials. I hope this focus propels the field forward.

Steven De'Juan Booth as the keynote speaker, sharing one image of President Obama and visitors to the Oval Office, part of the Obama Presidential Library collection.

The keynote session was titled the Afterlife of What We Archive, and it was presented by Steven De'Juan Booth:

“an archivist, researcher, and co-founder of The Blackivists, a collective of trained Black memory workers ​who provide expertise on archiving and preservation practices to communities in the Chicagoland area. His work and research interests include analog and born-digital audiovisual materials, Black cultural heritage preservation, community archives, and digital scholarship. He is currently the archivist/project manager of the Johnson Publishing Company Archive for the Getty Research Institute and the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture.

In 2020, Steven co-edited with Stacie Williams Loss/Capture, an editorial project exploring the state of Black cultural archives in and beyond Chicago, presented by Sixty Inches From Center, a Chicago-based arts publication and archiving initiative. ​He is currently working on a book project with Barrye Brown documenting the contributions and impact of African American archivists in SAA. He is also researching Black LGBTQIA spaces and newsletters published in the Midwest as sites and sources of knowledge production and sharing.  

Steven is part of a long lineage of Black information professionals who have matriculated from Morehouse College (BA in Music) and Simmons College (MS in Library Science). You can read more about his work on his website at http://www.stevendbooth.com/.”

He spoke about his journey to working in archives and how his experience working in the field has shaped his perception of what archives are and can be. I was drawn to his assertion that archives are as much about relationships (with donors, subjects, users, communities, fellow archivists) as they are about stuff - archives are about connection. This connection comes into play intrapersonally, and between individuals and their history and community. As such, radical empathy is key in archives. Archivists need to learn how to better talk to our communities in order to do this. We’re good at talking to other archivists but can’t always bridge the gap with folks who don’t have training in this field. And we need to spend more time listening with the understanding that sometimes users want to be heard without needing a concrete thing from the archives. He told some amazing stories about connecting with patrons to the Obama Presidential Library which clearly illustrated how to embrace this person-centered approach to the work. His talk was inspiring.

Kate Thornhill and a slide from her presentation ‘Decolonizing knowledge within Afro-Indigenous traditions‘ in the session Power and Respect: Giving Back IPR Rights to Vulnerable Communities.

The last session I’ll write about is Power and Respect: Giving Back IPR Rights to Vulnerable Communities:

“How can intellectual property rights be leveraged, documented, and framed in order to hold up the rights of vulnerable communities, provide repatriations to them, and ensure their data security? As curators, archivists, and librarians who participate in documenting future histories and hidden histories, how do we include marginalized communities into the documentation of their own visual media histories? For this VRA 2021 conference session, presenters who work in archives, digital scholarship, and museums will share techniques, methodologies, and policies that consider vulnerable communities ownership of intellectual property rights when building digital archives, digital collections, and digital humanities projects.”

A panel of four presenters discussed projects and work that navigated the boundaries of creation and ownership. These speakers were: Kate Thornhill on decolonizing knowledge within Afro-Indigenous traditions, April Hathcock on the Femifesto project, Meredith Hale on the Voices out loud project, and IP manager at San Francisco Museum of Art Sriba Kwadjovie Quintana who spoke about her experiences in that role and working with living artists.

Their presentations and the following discussion underscored how archivists and visual resources professionals need to - and in many cases are - shift away from the idea of our institutions as benevolent and rightful owners of all knowledge. Not all knowledge can and should be acquired, described, and be made accessible to all users. The wishes of creators and subjects of materials should always be centered, above the right of users’ access, especially when it comes to systemically, historically marginalized groups. I was drawn to the three pillars of the Femifesto project, as a means of summarizing what this type of relationship between communities and professionals can look like: (1) building relationships, (2) ethical cataloging and metadata creation, and (3) responsible sharing and accessibility.

The Q&A session at the end of the presentations resulted in some interesting dialogue around navigating care with creators and communities while working in institutional settings that are often more rigid, and how to handle individuals and communities in cases where legal protections are no longer in place. The panelists underscored that we operate in colonialist, capitalist systems - both at work and in our broader society. They stressed that we must acknowledge these realities, be transparent about processes and limitations, build trust and relationships, advocate for these groups, explore post-custodial models, and always consider ethics even if the law doesn’t come into play in any given situation.

These sessions and all the others that I attended at the conference gave me a lot to consider as I return to work. Though a lot of these issues don’t come up in my current role, given the limitations of working with an institutional collection, it is likely these scenarios may be more relevant in future positions. And ultimately, the overarching idea that people matter as much, if not more, than the “stuff” in our collective stewardship, is an important one to carry back to any job in this field.

VRA EAC community hours, Institutional Responses to BLM

In April, I joined the Visual Resource Association’s (VRA) Equitable Action Committee (EAC). This group evolved from the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee in fall of 2019, and is now tasked to:

“Advance and support an equitable, diverse, accessible, and inclusive association. With critical reflection and a steady eye on the future, this committee seeks to strengthen the association’s membership by welcoming, embracing, and supporting historically marginalized people, voices, and narratives. The committee also aims to educate and empower the association’s membership on issues of accessibility and disability inclusion opportunities. This committee will advise the Executive Board on creating equitable and inclusive practices.”

I wanted to join the committee because this work is critical, and I wanted to do this work outside my workplace. MASS Action and the fairly newly formed Equity Working Groups at the museum have been great opportunities for staff to push for necessary change and support each other through our individual learning and growth. I wanted to find a similar community outside our institution’s walls, especially given the limited capacity in which we’ve been able to do this work since the museum shuttered in March. This group has been really amazing in all those and so many more capacities. The co-chairs and other members are all wonderful, kind, and dedicated folks working in the broader visual resources field. 

The committee has organized a set of regular online discussion forums called community hours, in order to support professionals working in the field. Since April 2020, they’ve hosted community hours around topics including: employee and student privacy during the pandemic, setting remote work boundaries, examining gaps in support, critical cataloging, and professional development. These have varied in format from more traditional presentations and Q&A to looser discussions with some guiding prompts. Folks in VRA and beyond have been welcomed to come as they’re interested and available, and community-generated notes are available for all on the EAC’s website. Feedback has been positive for these events.

Given the mission of EAC, after the murder of George Floyd and resulting uprisings, the committee decided that we wanted to address racial equity in the visual resources field. The proliferation of racial equity statements coming from museums, archives, and libraries seemed like a good place to start. So we opted to organize two community hours around these statements: one looking at the responses of institutions from a communication perspective, and a second looking at concrete action that has or has not come from supposed commitments to racial justice.  

I gathered readings, developed prompts, and co-moderated these sessions, with the support (housekeeping announcements, screen and closed caption sharing, note taking) of our co-chairs. I’m not comfortable speaking in front of more than a couple of people, so I’m thankful to have worked with other members of the committee on this. Given the need for conversations around racial equity, and holding our respective institutions accountable, I knew I needed to set my discomfort aside to contribute to these community hours.

Both of the sessions drew around 20 participants, largely VRA members, and there was good dialogue and discussion. It was helpful to learn what other museums, archives, and libraries were or were not doing, especially to discover whether public statements were aligning with concrete anti-racism actions. The sessions provided space for folks to bring issues they were facing at work, and for resources to be shared around racial equity and anti-racism broadly and in our professional field.

The first conversation started with some guiding prompts as a jumping off point for further discussion. For the second session, we opted to turn some of the discussion prompts into poll questions to allow those joining to participate in a different format. We recognized that some joining may not have felt comfortable adding to either the chat or speaking up - even though these sessions are not recorded for the privacy of attendees - based on fear of voicing criticisms of their employer, discomfort in talking about racism and white supremacy, and/or discomfort in participating in group settings (or something else altogether!). 

I struggled during both sessions - with long pauses between written or verbal comments, with finding the “right” words and being an “effective” co-facilitator, and with wanting the sessions to be meaningful and helpful to those joining. I recognize that a lot of this is wrapped up in my own perfectionism (a characteristic of white supremacy culture), white fragility, and white silence. And I also recognize that my own desire to support tangible change and brainstorm plans for action are driven by urgency (again, a characteristic of white supremacy) and a general need to “fix” problems rather than to sit with difficult feelings. Since these community hours are community-driven, participants steered the conversation towards holding space for one another. And that’s ok, and it’s ok that I struggled. 

More than anything, I hope those who attended got something out of the sessions, that those who looked at the shared notes gleaned something from them, and that folks feel perhaps a little more empowered to do what they can to dismantle racism and white supremacy where they find it, including in our workplaces. We’re all learning and growing together, and sessions like these are just one step in that process. 

VRA Conference 2019

I attended the Visual Resource Association conference for the first time, and this year it was hosted in Los Angeles. I only became aware of the organization in the last year or so prior, which is odd given how closely the focus and goals fit with topics I am interested in professionally! I am glad to now be more connected to this group, and to have had the chance to meet so many folks through their annual meeting.

My first day was spent attending an intensive course in using the application OpenRefine. This is a free, open-source “tool for working with messy data: cleaning it; transforming it from one format into another; and extending it with web services and external data” (OpenRefine, n.d.). Two members of VRA who had practical experience using the application in their own respective professional settings, led the group in the basics. Using sample spreadsheets they provided, we loaded data, got an overview of the interface, performed basic sorting and filtering functions, and learned how to use functions to automate data cleanup. Most of the actions we took were fairly simple, but it is clear how useful even these basic commands could be. I wanted to take the class to better understand how we might approach our data cleanup project at work, where we face the merger of data from multiple different sources (homegrown databases, spreadsheets) into a new digital asset management system. The workshop helped me to think about how we could leverage tools like this one to work smartly, and how we will need to think creatively in order to cluster data to facilitate automation. In some cases, this may mean we need to perform several actions in order to transform information fully. Though this prospect still seems a little daunting, it was exciting to dig in and try my hand at some of this work.

The next days followed with more traditional conference sessions. The first I attended focused on the digital asset management environment at LACMA and the institution’s use of ResourceSpace. The museum’s Digital Assets Specialist discussed where DAMs is located within the organizational structure of the institution, and how that informs their goals. The Collections Information & Digital Assets (CIDA) team takes a user-centered approach to their work, and they are often acting as bridges between the museum’s IT department, external support services for their DAMs system, and staff. She talked about how this work is akin to translation, communicating between different groups in order to make sure all needs and dependencies are met. A big part of this work is also user education and training, to ensure expectations are realistic. With roughly 300 staff using the system, and over 350,000 assets managed within ResourceSpace, she also stressed the importance of management and governance, and integration with other existing systems (collections management database). As my museum pursues a new DAMs system, this presentation gave me a lot to think about - not just in terms of the solution we pick, but how we think about assets as information and how we can better serve staff.

DAMs management overview at LACMA.

Next up were a series of lighting talks on various projects and programs VRA professionals have recently undertaken. All of these presentations were interesting and showed the broad scope of work folks are involved in in this field. An MLIS candidate spoke about the ‘Information Worlds of Art Museum Staff,’ which appealed to me given my recent coursework in information communities. She set about her research project asking whether art museums’ staff information needs were being met by their current information resources, and what information worlds art museum staff contain. Through surveys sent to participating institutions, she learned that: museum websites are the most common information sources for all participants (intranet, public website) and all staff reported problems using this resource; and that online surrogates for the art object or primary text source were most commonly used as opposed to original resources. This has important implications for institutions like my own, and these findings could be leveraged to create better information resources for communities like these.

Another interesting lightning presentation was given by the Hirshhorn Collection Documentation and Research Manager. She discussed the role of photography in documenting artwork, especially with installation and contemporary artwork. While her institution has staff photographers who create this type of documentation, she posed the question “should visitor created photography documentation be collected and archived?” These type of images reveal how visitors interact with, experience, and perhaps even understand works of art. They can also document how a piece changes over time. While the Hirshhorn does not currently have any policies or protocol in place for the active collecting or archiving of visitor documentation, the museum does apply value to interaction on social media, and they are investigating the topic further. It is interesting to think about the possibilities of allowing more documenters - aside from institution-approved photographers - to contribute to the record of artwork.

The Image Resources Curator at UC Santa Barbara gave the final lightning presentation. She talked about how the UCSB Visual Resource Center underwent a physical transformation as they transitioned away from traditional slide library functionality after a renovation. They adopted a modular design to the new space to meet the needs of their community - professors and students. This included the installation of configurable furniture, a projector, multifunctional walls, multiple new workstations, and a large monitor. They also created space to view and temporarily store special collections, archival, museum collections to be used for instruction at the VRC. The physical space thus became much more closely aligned with the mission of serving the evolving needs of the community.

Kyoto Gardens at the conference venue, a lovely spot to take a break between sessions.

The next session I attended was focused on tools for analyzing art, texts, and films. The panel session looked at the development of various technologies from a VRA perspective: the development of a database that used content-based query for films, a comparison of existing OCR tools, and the application of deep learning to analyze the significance of image library slides. While much was presented as a work-in-progress, these technologies hold the potential to unlock information held within a range of resources. There is potential for VRA professionals to be able to more effectively describe and make accessible their collections, to provide new means for discovery, and to empower users to better analyze collections. It is likely that these tools will only improve with time - as is already evident in the advances in OCR.

I picked the next session largely because I was unclear of the definition of the core topics: digital scholarship and digital humanities. I was relieved when the presenters discussed this collective uncertainty we have about these subjects. They talked about how these disciplines bridge technologies, scholarship, and the humanities to bring VRA collections to life through interpretation. These types of projects range from complex and collaborative, like the digitization and presentation of the American Academy photographic archives in Italy, to more discrete and independent, like the interactive website ‘How to Make a Fake.’ The creation of robust metadata and notations, faceted searching options, use of IIIF, and mapping functionality help transform digitized resources to educate users and tell stories. The last presenter touched on some of the challenges within this domain, especially as it relates to the technical expertise needed to develop and sustain these projects over time. One example that helped illustrate this point was the use of a commercial real estate walk-through application, which was employed in a digital humanities paper to show the recreation of a historic interior in 360 degrees. This experience may need to be migrated to a new tool, should this service ever become defunct, and navigating licensing and copyright limits while attempting to effectively archive and preserve the paper can be difficult. VRA professionals cannot expect themselves to have the answers to all these potential roadblocks, but rather must leverage existing contacts with expertise, and help to bring together potential collaborators. As I have found time and time again in library school - it isn’t necessarily about what you know, it’s about knowing how to find the information you need - which includes our information networks.

The session, ‘Framing Places and Identities: Biographies of Photographic Archives and Their Environments,’ provided multiple perspectives on the complex histories and provenance many visual resource collections. In one case - a collection of photographs of the Salerno ivories at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence - the original physical images, digital surrogates, and new born digital images underwent transformations over time. The newest images were merged with the existing collection, and the collection as a whole was transformed as it became available online and was published widely. A different collection, Foto Arte Minore, has continued to grow over the decades. The intent of the photographer whose work comprises the core of the collection was carried out by the predecessors in his company, and more recently by commissions for similar work by the collecting institution. The relationship between repository and creator has thus become more fluid and active. A third presenter discussed how his institution had to piece together the body of work created by one important local photographer after it was dispersed by his family. This involved scouring sites like Craigslist and Ebay, proactively reaching out to the community, and maintaining lines of communication with potential donors over time. Though not all of the photographs were recovered, the portion of the collection that was reunited helped to tell the everyday story of the Japanese and Japanese-American community in 20th century California. The process also brought surviving subjects of the photographs, researchers, and the repository closer.

Next, a VRA professional from a neighboring art museum here in Chicago talked about ethical image use, or “sure, we can, but should we?” She made the case that as time has gone on, it has become easier to determine copyright but less clear if there are ethical implications for licensing images. Several case studies and their issues were presented: the use of an artist’s portrait rather than their work, overlaying text on artwork in marketing material, using artwork that aligned questionably with new product for the museum gift shop. In all situations, though copyright would permit use, there was the potential for conflict over the choice and context of the use of the images. The presenter stressed the importance of communicating with and educating requestors in these cases, to determine if a compromise or alternative solution could be found. Since she is often dealing with living artists, she also discussed how she often reached out to them to clarify these issues. In response to the question she posed of ‘who should be responsible for making ethical image decisions within an institution?’ she concluded by saying that everyone needs to feel ownership. Hopefully this type of awareness and consciousness is growing in libraries, archives, and museums that license images of and from their collections.

Custom-designed digitization station at the Getty.

The final presentation of the conference took one digitization project from start to final products: ‘Ed Ruscha’s Streets of LA: A Lesson in Digitizing, Organizing and Presenting Visual Information at the Getty.’ The team involved in the project first talked about the origins of the work, namely the access issues due to the format of the materials and the conservation concerns. They worked with a vendor to develop a custom solution to digitize the collection to minimize preservation issues and allow for ventilation, while also ensuring quality capture. For metadata, the team relied on accompanying written notebooks, notations on original housing material, OCR’ed street and business signs, and Google Cloud Vision API to create item-level descriptive data. They were also able to leverage existing GIS location data when they were able to determine street addresses. For both Google Cloud Vision API auto tagging and imported GIS location data, the team had to spend some additional time to perform quality control and assess how accurate and helpful this generated data was in this context. Finally, the team employed IIIF and designed two separate online portals for the anticipated users of the collections: scholarly researchers and the general public interested in the subject of the images (streets of Los Angeles over time). It was helpful to understand all of the work that went into the project like this one, especially as it relates to both expertise and staffing.

Example of auto-tagging suggestions for one of the images digitized as part of Getty’s project.

In between all these sessions, I had the opportunity to connect with other VRA professionals and new friends. We debriefed on what we learned, shared about our work, and commiserated over common challenges. Even though I am new to this community and felt uncertain about my role and fit, I felt welcomed. I will value the personal interactions and connections just as much (if not more!) than all the knowledge I gained through the formal presentations.

References:
OpenRefine. (n.d.). Welcome! Retrieved fromhttp://openrefine.org/