FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — When School of Architecture students contemplate a crisp image of the sacred circle at Stonehenge glowing on a screen in a dark auditorium, they benefit from the knowledge and organizational prowess of Christine Hilker, director of the school’s C. Murray Smart Media Center. Her work is both visual and largely invisible (only a fraction of the school’s students have found the center, perched high in the former stacks of Vol Walker Hall), but it has not gone unnoticed. Recently Hilker was honored with the 2008 Distinguished Service Award from the Visual Resources Association in recognition of her 27 years of service in the profession.

“It was a big honor,” Hilker said, relaxed in her light-filled aerie lined with art, books and plants. Though she appreciates the recognition, it’s the support she has found within the organization that has been most meaningful through the years.

“Here on campus, there aren’t many people who do what I do. You really need colleagues to bounce ideas off of,” she said.

Sounding boards are especially important when you’re participating in the late 20^th century sea change from analog to digital. When Hilker arrived at the School of Architecture in 1979, she found some 65,000 slides, a few reel-to-reel tapes and no catalog of any kind. She bought a video camera and a computer and got busy, building the collection to 80,000 slides, 1,000 videos and 35,000 digital images. These days, instead of filing slides, student workers spend most of their time scanning them for inclusion in Hilker’s digital database, which she plans to offer campuswide beginning this summer.

“The trend is toward sharing and pooling resources,” she said. “Faculty shouldn’t have to be image managers — it’s a lot of work to organize and keep track of them.” With the digital databases now available, professors can park the shoebox of slides in the attic and clear space-hogging digital images from their hard drives.

“We are lucky to have Chris Hilker, who has very capably ushered the school’s visual resources into the digital era,” said Jeff Shannon, dean of the School of Architecture. “Designers learn from the work of other designers, and Chris facilitates this process of learning by seeing.”

Chris Hilker earned a Bachelor of Arts in history and a Master of Education in instructional resources from the University of Arkansas. Her first major contribution to the Visual Resources Association was a nationwide survey on the educational background of slide curators conducted in the mid-80s. She subsequently served a three-year term as treasurer, a two-year term as chair of the nominating committee, and a three-year term as the organization’s first public relations and communications officer. Hilker facilitated communication within the Visual Resources Association by establishing a membership Listserve in 1991 that she subsequently managed for 12 years. She helped design and build the association’s Web site and currently serves as the Web site coordinator, a new position.

In her spare time, Hilker pursues her interests in jazz and horses. She is treasurer for the North Arkansas Jazz Society and rides three times a week. Her new horse, a 1,000-pound cross between a quarter horse and Clydesdale, arrived at Deer Creek Farm last Friday.

“He’s a big guy,” she said with a laugh. Though the horse is packing a few extra pounds, likely he won’t be for long, given his role in providing a break from managing students, helping professors and cataloging images.