We’ve all experienced how hard it is to carry on any type of discussion BETWEEN our two listservs, VRA-L and ARLIS-L. The Visual Resources Division in ARLIS/NA wanted to start a blog that would specifically address the crossover issues many VR professionals now face, especially those of us who are in some way linked to libraries at our institutions. As we become increasingly “digital only”, have less foot traffic, rarely see our faculty, and depend on larger entities for both our image content and our image operations. But it’s been very hard for us to talk about things with all of our constituents at the same time. And that’s a shame, because when we talk about potential mergers with our partner art libraries, or ARTstor, or ContentDM, or metadata issues, or image searching strategies, we need to be inclusive, not exclusive. We all need to get more practice in these new forms of commnication, and we might find that the continuity of blogs may facilitate some discussions in a way that listserv messages just can’t.
So we are inviting everyone interested in these issues to join in, regardless of who you report to, who pays the bills, or of which organizations you’re a member.
Eileen
Image Issues 