VRA Core Session to Cover Metadata for Cultural Materials on May 9

 Join us at METRO on Monday, May 9^th to learn more about a topic that is of growing importance to anyone who deals with cultural materials in image archives, museums, or digital libraries.  VRA Core, a metadata standard for the description of images and works of art and culture, will be the central focus of this workshop as instructor Elisa Lanzi leads participants through a discussion of its major aspects, benefits, and more.  To learn more and register for “VRA Core: an Introduction to Metadata for Cultural Materials,” please visit http://www.metro.org/en/cev/61.

Description:

The VRA Core is a metadata standard for the description of images and works of art and culture.  The standard is hosted by the Library of Congress Network Development and MARC Standards Office in partnership with the Visual Resources Association. Our workshop will cover the overall benefits of using the VRA Core in order to ensure streamlined inputting of crucial information about works and images and to improve searching and user understanding.  Participants will have an opportunity to learn and experience best practices for cultural cataloguing using VRA Core and related standards, such as Cataloging Cultural Objects.  The workshop introduces participants to the major aspects of VRA Core including:  the basic element set, the use of authorities and controlled vocabularies, and the VRA Core schema for sharable metadata. Focusing on the decision-making process for creating descriptions, the workshop agenda includes real-life examples, presentations, and group exercises. The instructor will gather workshop participant questions and topics of concern ahead of time.

Who should attend:

Cataloguers and collection managers who deal with cultural materials in image archives, museums, and digital libraries.  This workshop assumes that the participant has little or no familiarity with VRA Core but has some familiarity with descriptive practice.

By the end of this program, participants will:

• understand the conceptual model of the VRA Core
• know how the VRA Core relates to other metadata standards
• learn about diverse cataloging situations for cultural materials
• be able to apply the basic elements of VRA Core practice

Please contact Laura Forshay at lforshay@metro.org with any questions.