HISTORY & MISSION

The School of the Arts Slide Library, which began as a modest slide collection, was established during the mid-1960s. The School of the Arts slide collection was originally housed in the Buford House, which is still today the Art History building, an historic Richmond row house that fronts Franklin Street as seen in this picture.

In the 1970s the slide collection moved from the Buford House to the second floor of the Pollak Building, which had just become then the new arts facility. The Pollak Building also became the hub of the departments of Painting and Printmaking, Interior Design, Fashion & Merchandising, Communication Arts/Design and Photography which also moved into the Pollak Building. The faculty of the various departments widened the usage of the the slide collection. Today we have become the Visual Resource Center and our slide collection is one of the five largest in the nation: The collection accounts for 500,000+ 35mm slides with a yearly acquisition of 7,000 - 10,000 slides.

Mission

The School of the Arts Visual Resource Center, with its exemplary collection, service, and staff operates as an integral support unit primarily for the School of the Arts. The Visual Resource Center also provides an outreach support for the University at large, the Richmond community and the State of Virginia.

SCANNING STATIONS

Scanning stations are available for faculty who wish to place their courses on-line via Blackboard. Courses, or portions thereof, may be created at:
http://blackboard.vcu.edu/

For further assistance in developing on-line teaching materials using Blackboard, contact Bud Deihl at 828-4383 or through Mr. Deihl's email account, or better yet, stop by the VRC.

IMAGING RESOURCES

VCUarts Digital Image Databank
Our Digital Image Database is an educational tool that provides access to institutional and community image collections through a web interface. The VCUDID offers a complete visual environment for working with images, multimedia, and text with simple to complex searching capabilities and an extensive tool set for viewing, organizing, and presenting images. http://www.luna.art.vcu.edu:8081/BrowserInsight/BrowserInsight The site is password protected. Contact your department for password information.

ARTstor
ARTstor is available to all students, faculty, and staff of Virginia Commonwealth University. This digital repository contains hundreds of thousands of images and related data for use in retrieving information or utilizing digital presentations. Please contact the Visual Resource Center for more information: sarc@vcu.edu | http://www.artstor.org/info/

Related Collections on the VCU Academic West Campus
In addition to the School of the Arts Visual Resource Center, the art-related collection of the Cabell Library provides a valuable resource for research in the arts. Nearly 100,000 book titles, more than 30,000 exhibition catalogues (which grows yearly), and over 8,000 journals related to the arts are available. Cabell Library also has a collection of over 1,100 films and videos on art subjects. This collection also includes supplemental collections of slide sets, art prints, spoken word recordings, and computer software and multi-media CD-ROMs. Located in Cabell library is one of the few Book Art collections of substantial quality and quantity found in the United States. This significant collection includes works by Dieter Roth, Edward Ruscha, John Baldessari and Willem Sandberg. Supporting the work of music scholars are in excess of 10,000 music scores, over 1,800 CDs, over 10,500 LPs and more than 2,800 cassettes.

LOCATION & HOURS

The Visual Resource Center is located in Room 203 of the Pollak Building.

Hours of operation are:

9:00 am - 6:00 pm Monday through Thursday
9:00 am - 5:00 pm Friday

ADMINISTRATION

The Visual Resource Center is managed by one full-time (Director) and several work-study students. Members of the Library Committee, elected annually from the various departments of the School of the Arts, the Director of the VRC, the Director and the Arts and Humanities Librarian from Cabell provide valuable information and direction.

COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT

The majority of the images are in-house produced from a variety of sources provided by faculty, students and staff. A special request form is made available. Slide production is free, provided once images are photographed, the slides permanently belong to the collection.

CONTACT

Visual Resource Center
325 N. Harrison Street | P.O.Box 842519 | Richmond, VA. 23284-2519 | U.S.A
Office: (804) 828-1683
Fax: (804) 827-7296
E-MAIL: sarc@vcu.edu