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Packaging research pulls from materials science, food science, marketing, logistics and regulation, often all in the same project. This guide is for students in the Packaging Technology B.S. (see the four-year plan) and the packaging minor, and for plastics engineering students working on films and containers.
A good first move is to define the package by its job: what product it holds, what has to stay out (oxygen, moisture, light, children), what it has to survive (a 1.2-meter drop, a 30-day truck route, a freezer) and where it ends up afterward. Each of those is a separate search.
Databases and indexes
- Packaging & Converting Abstracts. Packaging science, converting and printing on films and board, 1965 to now. Start here for almost anything.
- Polymer & Substrate Data Sheets. Barrier, tensile and seal properties for resins, films, paperboard and corrugated grades. You will want these for PKG 2200.
- Package Design Image Archive. About 48,000 photographs of retail packages from 1950 to now, searchable by material, closure type and product category. Useful for design precedent and for proving that your “new” closure was sold in 1974.
- Trade Journal Backfile. Packaging and converting trade magazines from 1948 on, where machinery, materials and costs show up years before they reach a journal.
- Food & Fermentation Research Index. Shelf-life, migration and spoilage studies. It is shared with the hospitality and food science guide.
Books and e-books
| Call numbers | Subject |
|---|---|
| TS 195–198.8 | Packaging: design, materials, machinery, testing |
| TS 1080–1268 | Paper, paperboard and corrugated |
| TP 1080–1185 | Plastics and polymer processing |
| TP 370–374 | Food preservation and shelf life |
| HF 5770 | Packaging in marketing and branding |
The library also keeps the Package Sample Library in the Level 2 compact shelving: about 3,100 physical packages in labeled bins, sorted by material and product type. Samples check out for three days. Please return them in the shape you found them, unless crushing them was the assignment. The department has asked that nobody borrow, open or recycle the 1987 cereal box.
Specialized sources
- Test procedures. Distribution-testing procedures (drop, vibration, compression, atmospheric conditioning) and the material test methods behind them are covered in the standards and patents guide. Ask before you buy one. The library may already have it.
- Regulations. Food-contact and drug-packaging rules are in the federal regulations, which are free online. Ruth Tollefson keeps a one-page map of which parts apply to which projects.
- Industry research. The Center for Packaging Innovation publishes its sponsored-project summaries in the Porter Research Repository once sponsors approve them. The cheese packaging shelf-life study is a good model of how to cite that work.
- Patents. Closures, dispensers and tamper-evident features have a lot of patent history. Search it before you present a design as new.
Citing and getting help
Use the style your instructor names. Most packaging courses accept the author–date style. To cite a physical package, give the brand and product name, the manufacturer, the year and place you bought it or the Package Sample Library number, and your own photograph. A test standard is cited by designation, title and year.
Ruth Tollefson is the librarian for the College of Applied & Technical Studies. She books consultations in Halvorsen 256 or online, and visits PKG 1500 and PKG 4900 each term. Students in the Packaging Society can ask her for a group session before the national student design competition. Articles Porter does not hold come through interlibrary loan.
Fictional information
UW–Porter Falls is a work of parody. This packaging guide is fictional, and so are the Package Sample Library and its 1987 cereal box. The databases, call-number shelving, collections and librarians on this guide are invented, so nothing here can actually be searched, borrowed or booked, and none of it describes a real library.