ARLIS/NA 46th Annual Conference

Increasingly, art and design libraries are broadening the scope of their collections to include objects - material products, color samples, fashion construction samples, natural history specimens - to support their curricula. This session will present both the research and practice of object-based collections.


Lareese Hall’s "The Exotic Familiar: The Edna Lawrence Nature Lab and the Web of Making and Knowledge" focuses on the history, development, management, and use of a natural history collection in the art and design school setting. Rebecca Price will examine the importance of tactile literacy and how it informs design practice in her paper "Tactile Literacy: Vital Skills in a Digital Age." Jen Wong, in her presentation "De-Objectifying Collections" will discuss the limits of tactile information in object-based collections (OBC) and the value of faculty partnership and course integration in giving objects a relevant educational context. Christopher Jones will discuss building a materials collection in "Creativity & Materials Collections: Supporting Arts Based Research through Haptic Learning." Annemarie Haar explores collaborative collection-building with faculty in "Object-based Collections Supporting Art + Design Pedagogy."


This panel was organized by the Materials SIG.