AIC's 53rd Annual Meeting

The Historic Building Materials Collection (HBMC) is a repository of material samples collected from historic buildings and sites around the world. It serves as a resource for architects, historians, conservators, and scholars seeking access to traditional and historic building materials, ranging from the vernacular to high-style structures, including archaeological sites. The collection’s core function is to facilitate direct access to physical material specimens and enable advanced analysis, such as cross-section and thin-section microscopy, providing critical insights into the materials' composition, structure, and history.

However, with the physical collection outgrowing its designated institutional space, the need for a more efficient, user-friendly way to access and manage these materials has become urgent. Handling these historic objects too frequently increases their risk of damage, and traditional archival methods do not provide the discoverability or ease of access required for research. This has driven the need to create a digital interface that offers scholars and visitors the ability to explore the collection by cross-referencing, reduce wear and tear from handling the physical specimens, and boost awareness and engagement with the collection to a larger audience.

The digital interface for the HBMC acts as a searchable and query-able repository, allowing users to navigate the collection through various filters, such as material composition, building or site, object type, or date range. This repository streamlines the process of discovery by enabling users to explore and gather relevant information without physically handling the objects. Each specimen within the collection is assigned a unique object ID that encodes its material composition, site of origin, and date of creation, a redundant step that protects the integrity of the collection against loss of data. In addition, the unique ID links the specimen it to its virtual record, which expands with a narrative of the object, as well as its inherent deterioration conditions, previous research done, and any associated objects.

In addition to making the research process more efficient, the digital interface serves as a preservation tool. By moving the initial task of discovery to a public website, it is expected an increased awareness of the collection while minimizing the frequency of physical handling of the samples. Users can access high-quality images, 3D scans, and detailed metadata of each object, and only request physical access once objects have been identified. This system of controlled access not only protects the specimens from potential damage but also supports long-term conservation efforts.

The digital repository will support embedding analytical data to common constituents found in historic building materials, such as particle size distribution of an aggregate or the molecular spectrum of a known pigment, providing scholars with relevant scientific data immediately.

By combining digital technology with traditional archival methodologies, this interface will not only prolong the physical preservation of the collection but also facilitate research in conservation, enhancing the study and understanding of historic building materials.