The Visual Resources Association (VRA) has just released a White Paper on the management and use of image resources: Advocating for Visual Resources Management in Educational and Cultural Institutions.

The paper encourages "holistic thinking" about meeting institutional and individual image user needs in educational/cultural institutions. It identifies six strategic areas for future planning: multiple image sources; integrating personal and institutional collections; social computing and collaborative projects; life-cycle continuum of image assets and their description; rights and copyright compliance; and visual literacy.

The paper points out that VR managers are now increasingly aligned with IT, rights management, and course management issues and policies as they build institution-wide resources. The recent elimination of some key VR positions is of great concern to this group and appears very short-sighted. VRA President Allan Kohl sums it up: "When more academic disciplines are using images as primary teaching resources, and visual literacy is increasingly understood as being central to learning, it is more important than ever to support the building of shared collections to reduce redundancy, facilitate resource sharing, increase efficiencies, and minimize costs."

On a positive note, the VRA White Paper describes several successful administrative scenarios that offer flexible options for building shared image collections and providing support for their users at both educational and cultural institutions.