ORGANIZER/MODERATOR:
- Maureen Burns, Consultant and Sales Representative, IMAGinED Consulting & Archivision
PRESENTERS:
- Robb Detlefs, Director, Strategic Initiatives, Gallery Systems
- Nancy Harm, Director of Business Development, Luna Imaging, Inc.
- Andreas Knab, Owner, vrcHost LLC
- Renate Wiedenhoeft, President, SASKIA Ltd. and Scholars Resource, Inc.
- Susan Jane Williams, Metadata Specialist, Archivision, Inc.
The Visual Resources Association has always had a number of commercial partners or “vendors” who provide goods and services to information professionals. Often perceived as big businesses, they are in reality small collaborative operations that are doing similar work to that of the visual resources curator, museum professional, librarian, or archivist—photographing the built environment and cultural materials needed for teaching and learning, digitizing archival collections for online access, cataloging at the item level, developing and providing collection management software, online presentation tools, hosted solutions, and preservation services. In addition to these services, commercial partners often collaborate with information professionals to: further develop their services based on needs, determine added value tools for users, implement new technologies, and share lessons learned. This panel will provide specific examples of this type of collaborative activity, explore the products and possibilities of working together, and discuss ways in which these partnerships might expand in the future.