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Visual Resources Center

Mission and Vision

Mission Statement

The primary role and purpose of the Visual Resources Center (VRC) is to support, facilitate and enhance the Art and Art History Department, other Dickinson College departments, students and Dickinson College’s visual literacy scholarship. The VRC is developed to promote visual literacy growth, visual literacy education and visual literacy positive pedagogical change from the resources we offer that coincide with Dickinson College’s mission statement, values and goals.

Vision Statement

Advise the Dickinson College community with image related and visual literacy programming issues. We will contribute our research skills, technological activities, organization, production and preservation of information.

Consortia with faculty, students and departments to integrate visual literacy services and visual literacy researching skills more fully in the Dickinson curriculum.

Create a dynamic learning environment offering students an easy to navigate configuration of resources, services, tools in a single location. We will explore creating a joint service program with the library’s digital services.

Develop a report with other departments, libraries and cultural institutions that aid us in providing cost-effective access to a broader range of information resources and developing innovative services.

Enhance visual literacy intellectualism on campus through digital services that provide assistance for multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary discourses that celebrate theory and ideas, fosters intellectual curiosity and provokes a sense of wunderkummer in the liberal arts. We will focus on art, exhibitions and cultural events to contribute learning and teaching in the Dickinson College community, to the visual literacy and aesthetic development of students, and to fostering a “consciously creative community.”

Expand the Visual Resources Center with a study hall, creating space for group work, independent study, technologically rich areas and new services.

Experiment with new service models and tools in response to technological changes in scholarly communication with faculty and student needs. We will adapt our services to meet new user needs, take advantage of emerging technologies, support changes in visual literacy pedagogy, and contain costs.

Liaison with other academic departments and technological service units to coordinate our collective support of learning, research and teaching at Dickinson College.

Support a college wide effort to create, archive and present an institutional image repository and unique digital assets. We will provide leadership to ensure perpetual access to the college’s unique scholarly output and other digital assets related to academic and cultural programs documenting the intellectual history of the college.

Transform the Visual Resources Center into a “functioning organism” encompassing the full range of information resources and services needed to support visual learning and teaching. We will continue to expand our expertise in the management of images, metadata, A/V resources, media and other genres as needed.

Unify unaggregated information resources into a single system with an intuitive search interface. We will implement a system that allows users to search for virtual images, and correlating metadata, besides other media resources from an aggregator interface page.