Is anyone interested in occasional discussion about print materials? I’d love to share some of our more interesting titles, and learn about what you all are collecting as well. For example, Pattern Magic is one of the most unique books on clothing construction we’ve seen in years. We jumped right on the Japanese version as soon as it was released, but we’re just tickled that it’s available in English now. Do you have it in your collection? What do your patrons think of it?
Additionally, I think we could all help each other with some tough collection development problems. For example, “sourcing” is a subject that we can’t seem to find enough print materials on. Our students need guides for contractors and manufacturers of clothing and textiles worldwide, and print is still preferred by many. We have some great guides for the US, many published by Fashiondex but it’s hard to find the same for overseas. Any suggestions?
Looking forward to your feedback and conversation,
Robin Dodge
Special Collections Librarian
Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising
Fashion, Textile & Costume Librarians 
I checked out the Fashiondex website. It looks like a very useful resource, so I added it to our Fashion Librarians LibGuide – WEBSITE tab, DIRECTORIES section: http://libguides.pima.edu/aecontent.php?pid=176247&sid=1484041
Thanks for sharing it! You’ll notice a few other directories on the LibGuide. See if they’re useful and let me know if we need to add more.
As for discussing print materials – yes, I’m definitely interested. Generally, I’d like to hear everyone’s suggestions on good resources. (What’s new that looks promising? What are the work-horse resources the students continually turn to?) Our fashion students still show a strong bias for print over online tools. I don’t know if it’s because our users are visually-oriented or they simply like the synchronicity of browsing.
I’ve just ordered one of the Pattern Magic books and can’t wait to receive it. Now that you’ve highly recommended it, I’ll go ahead and order the others. (Thanks for that, too!)
Our students are using the Frances Harder publications quite a lot since we got them in – and some have already been stolen (always a positive sign!) 😉 They’re pretty basic, but that can be a good thing for designers who are just getting started.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?_encoding=UTF8&sort=relevancerank&search-alias=books&field-author=Frances%20Harder
Sandra Ley – FTC SIG Moderator