The Core Categories for Visual Resources – Introduction (VRA Core 1.0)
I. What are the Core Categories for Visual Resources?
For over a decade the visual resources community has expressed a desire for documentation
standards for image collections--standards that would lead to shared cataloging in a national
image database. The Core Categories for Visual Resources are intended as a guideline for
describing visual documents depicting works of art, architecture, and artifacts or structures from
material, popular, and folk culture. While they are not specific instructions for system-building
or record structures, they may be used as a template for the foundation of such applications in
both local or shared environments.
The Core:
provides a template especially designed for visual resources collections. The Core
element set contains two groupings of elements, the Work Description Categories (19
elements), and the Visual Document Description Categories (9 elements)
promotes the use of data value standards by recommending controlled vocabularies for
specific categories.
recommends a level of description between minimal and full.
facilitates interoperability with other cultural heritage information resources. It is mapped
to MARC format, the Categories for the Description of Works of Art (