My campus has recently seen a surge of collaboration among scholars in the fields of architecture/design, public history, and the visual/performing arts. Scholars and students are learning to engage with the built environment in dynamic and innovative ways through emerging technologies like drone-based aerial photography, geo-tagging, 3D printing and scanning, and virtual reality environments. With our wealth of unique primary sources and information skills, it seems like library, archives, and museum professionals could add tremendous value to these kinds of projects.
Discussions might include topics like:
- How are digital humanities scholars currently using primary sources from archival collections on architecture and design?
- What new possibilities can we (LAM professionals) imagine for these resources?
- How do we tackle barriers to use, such as low primary source literacy for visual materials, intellectual property and copyright fears, mistaken assumptions by scholars about LAM organizations, etc?
- How can we engage design professionals (architects, industrial designers, engineers, etc) in this work?