Architecture, Building & Planning Library

Designing a digital collection that will inspire


ABP library

Designing a digital collection that will inspire

What the Architecture, Building and Planning Library collects, and the digitisation projects that we choose are very much driven by an understanding of what is important to the built environment discipline, and the need to preserve it's history.

The catalyst for this project was a lecture by Professor Miles Lewis to students in the Architecture, Building and Planning Faculty, where he used the objects from the  Heritage Building Collection. This led to the realisation the that the extraordinary story of these very ordinary looking objects needed to be told.

Making 3D versions of the objects suited this collection as it provided the broadest opportunity to interact, or “play with” the objects; to think more deeply about the object, its use, why it had been collected and how it related to the history of building materials. Sitting behind this were curatorial questions about ways to access the collection and give context. Could there be a way to replicate having Professor Lewis present these materials?

The challenge is to think about the management of the digital records into the future, and to keep the digital objects in a state that responds to, and grows with,  changes in technology.