Select your project in the Solution Explorer and press the Show All Files button. Expand the My Project node, then expand the Resources.resx node, then double-click the Resources.Designer.vb node. You should see before you the auto-generated code file for My.Resources. You'll see that My.Resources is indeed a namespace and it contains a module named Resources. That module just contains a bunch of normal property declarations, one for each of your resources plus a couple of others. This is no different to any other type you might create yourself. How would you enumerate the properties of one of your own types? You couldn't, unless you used reflection. It's the same case here. You're hardly going to do that so what you've suggested is the best way.