Visual Resources

I've been a visual resource cataloger for a little over 5 years at the MacLean Visual Resource Center at the Art Institute of Chicago. I really enjoy visual resources as a career because I not only work with images of art and architecture, but also use my organizational and analytical skills to categorize and describe them.

I'm a member of the Visual Resource Association, the organization for visual resource professionals. Through the VRA, I've met a number of really smart and interesting colleagues doing similar work at other museums as well as universities, libraries and cultural institutions. I've found the annual VRA conference to be essential for learning about new trends in the field, understanding how different institutions provide service to their patrons and the role new technologies play in both of these aspects of our work.

Digital images have begun to change the field in both interesting and challenging ways. I'm really glad to be involved in this profession at a time when it's undergoing such a radical change in not only what we do, but how we do it. For a more detailed description, here is a very interesting article about the visual resource environment at liberal arts colleges by Roger C. Schonfeld.