Collections of textiles--historic costume, quilts, needlework samplers, and the like--have benefited greatly from the digital turn in museum and archival work. Both institutional online repositories and collections-based social media sites have fostered unprecedented access to textile collections that have traditionally been marginalized in museums. How can curators, interpreters, and collections managers make best use of these new opportunities? To answer this question, the author worked with sites including the Great Lakes Quilt Center at the Michigan State University Museum, the Design...

Collections of textiles historic costume, quilts, needlework samplers, and the like have benefited greatly from the digital turn in museum and archival work. Both institutional online repositories and collections-based social media sites have fostered unprecedented access to textile collections that have traditionally been marginalized in museums. How can curators, interpreters, and collections managers make best use of these new opportunities? To answer this question, the author worked with sites including the Great Lakes Quilt Center at the Michigan State University Museum, the Design...