VR of the Future: Material Resource Collections

            For many years, visual resource collections focused on creating libraries of slides and digital images for student learning. Within the past few years, visual resource collections at several of the nation’s top design schools have begun delving into a new type of collection: materials. Rhode Island School of Design, Harvard Graduate School of Design, The University of Texas at Austin, California State Polytechnic University, and California College for the Arts have all started collecting materials that their students can discover a wide range of design materials, ranging from ceramics to papers to textiles.

            To learn about this new field of librarianship, I travelled to Rhode Island School of Design to meet Mark Pompelia, Visual Resources Librarian, who gave me a tour of their impressive VRC. The Graham Visual Resources Center at RISD houses approximately 175,000 slides, including both 35mm and lantern slides. It also contains over 20,000 materials for students to study, organized by “composition-based categories such as wood, metal, glass, mineral, animal, plastics, composites, etc.” (Fleet Library website). Amazingly, this collection is circulating, which allows students to study materials in different contexts and to understand them fully. The MRC at RISD began in 2009 after a survey found that small collections of materials were scattered across campus; the first collection to move into the library itself was that of the Department of Interior Architecture (Pompelia 2).

            One major challenge of materials collections is the standards with which one should catalog them, because they “[challenge] traditional concepts, roles, and functions as a library, collection, lab, and center merge into one space with a cross-campus mission. The learned areas in visual resources of digital collection creation and management (metadata schema and digital asset management) are also challenged with the return to—and assertion of—the original/physical object” (Pompelia 1). In addition, because of the enormously varying nature of all materials, it can be different to describe properties that apply to all objects in the collection. Schools focusing on architecture will often categorize materials by prototypical use (ie. Flooring tiles, wallpaper), while more general design schools are organizing them by their intrinsic properties rather than their typical uses (Hindmarch 7). The University of Texas at Austin Materials Lab online catalog (http://soa.utexas.edu/matlab/search/) allows browsing allows browsing within categories such as composition, form, process, properties, and applications. According to Mr. Pompelia, he and other VR librarians at RISD are working with Harvard to establish a shared taxonomy and online catalog. In terms of circulation procedures, RISD is currently using a hand-written ledger, while schools such as Cal Poly have begun bar-coding items (Hindmarch 10).

            Throughout my interview and subsequent research, I realized that a strong relationship with vendors is a necessity for successful material resource collections. RISD works with a couple. The first is Materials ConneXion, a materials consulting firm based out of New York City (http://www.materialconnexion.com/). Materials ConneXion runs an “Active Matter” program, which allows RISD and other institutions to receive a periodic shipment of new, innovative materials to add to their collection. In addition, RISD students can visit their 7,000 New York city location to discover more. Other vendors such as Materia (http://materia.nl/), based in the Netherlands, and Inventables, (https://www.inventables.com/), based out of Chicago, are also partnering with schools to provide the most up-to-date products.

            While materials collections are nothing new to architecture firms, they provide a fresh use of visual resources within higher education. The materials library at Cal Poly was established with the following goals in mind: “to promote an increased awareness of materials, especially in relation to sustainability; Provide a setting for collaboration between students of architecture and related disciplines where a spirit of integrated practice can develop; Enable developing designers, engineers and managers to follow emerging trends in materials and building products” (Hindmarch 4). It is these goals which are inspiring VR curators think beyond the slide and towards hand-held objects.

The large majority of material in this paper is based on an interview with Mark Pompelia that  took place at RISD on November 18, 2013. Other resources quoted in this paper include:

Fleet Library. Rhode Island School of Design, Web. 10 Dec. 2013. <http://library.risd.edu/>.

Pompelia, Mark. “Texture and Materiality: Creating a New Material Resource Center at

      RISD.” VRA Bulletin 38.2 (2011): 1-7.

Hindmarch, Leanne, and Robert M. Arens. "The Academic Library and Collaborative Architectural 

     Education: Creating a Materials Collection at Cal Poly." Art Documentation 28.2 (2009): 4-12.