IAR 101: woodworking and desktop objects

You may notice an influx of chat questions or in-person reference visits related to an IAR 101 project over the next few days. Students in this class are tasked with designing and fabricating an object for their studio desktop out of wood. What do I mean by object? Great question! The parameters are just that it needs to be made out of wood and fit on their desktop; the goal is for it to be functional in some way, rather than just decorative, but the IAR foundations instructors have purposely left this very open.

The actual object isn't due for several weeks, but in the mean time they need to find examples (they will call this "precedents") of objects as well as information about wood as a material (different varieties, properties, etc.) and woodworking tools/techniques. They were told just today that they need to bring at least one print book with them to class on October 18, which is why you may see an uptick in questions between now (Thursday, 10/13) and next Tuesday (10/18).

As far as searching for print books that might provide examples, this is actually kind of a difficult assignment! I covered some search techniques that might be useful in a class workshop, but I do not expect students to have totally absorbed it. So: here are some ideas for subject searching that might help! Encourage students to provide their own keywords, and then suggest adding one or more of the following subject terms.

• su:handbooks
• su:manuals
• su:catalogs
• su:architecture
• su:decorative arts
• su:interior design
• su:interior decoration
• su:design and construction
• su:office

Many of those are not actual subject headings, but words/terms that appear in one or more useful subject headings! So, an example of a potentially useful search on woodworking might be something like:

woodworking AND su:handbooks

Potentially helpful searches for finding general examples of design objects for workplace organization could be:

storage AND su:interior design 

design AND su:office layout

workspace AND su:office decoration 

studio AND wood AND su:furniture 

design AND su:office equipment and supplies 

I also encouraged students to browse in the following areas, all on the fourth floor of the tower:

• NK1700-2195 (Interior decoration, house decoration)
• NK2200-2750 (Furniture)
• NK9600-9955 (Woodwork)
• TT180-200 (Woodworking, furniture making, upholstering)

Students may latch onto the idea that they are only looking for examples of wooden objects, but they can also find examples of functional desktop objects that they will design and fabricate from wood.

Thank you for helping these new designers, and please feel free to reach out to me yourself (mmurphy@uncg.edu), or refer students to me, with any questions.