Maurice de Kleijn, Spinlab, walks in with the question if University Library can help him printing out on of his 3D models, as prototype to see what's needed for an exihibition at Allard Pierson museum https://allardpierson.nl/verwacht/via-appia-revisited/

This is a form of co-creation where a researcher has already produced a 3D model and the Library searched for the best way to print these objects. Prototypes are used as first examples in the printing process. 

Maurice worked further on printing out 3D models by himself for this exhibition. 

Via Appia

The Via Appia was one of the four 'highways' of the Romans, running from the capital Rome to Brindisi in the southeast. Over time, numerous archaeologists, historians, architects, artists and photographers have revisited the ancient monuments along the Via Appia. Thanks to their interpretations, always from different motives and perspectives, we have a rich, layered history of representation of the Via Appia Antica.

Rients de Boer teaching courses in Ancient History and Assyriology and needed objects to tell his students on cuneiform writing. The orginal object is 4000 years old, and located in the archive of the university library. Students are able to see this object (carefully placed on a pillow), but it's to risky to take this old object in hands. In fact they cannot really study the cuneiform text carefully. Therefore Rients asked us if the university libary was able to reproduce the claycone. We started with a scan via a mobile app, but the quality of the output was not good enough to reproduce a good print. The university library bought a qualitative 3D scanner, and by now we are able to create reproduction of herritage objects who belong to the Vrije Universiteit. Rients was very happy with the plastic reproduction. He took this oject with him on his bycicle to the city center of Amsterdam and used this together with his students to deciphering cuneiform text on this claycone.

Snails are famous for shooting love darts, which are often likened to the darts of Cupid. However, this courtship ritual is actually quite violent because it involves the stabbing of a sharp calcareous structure through the body wall of the mating partner. To illustrate how such strange mating tactics can evolve, Dr. Joris M. Koene has recently developed an interactive lecture component during which a group of participants is divided into Egg Layers and Sperm Donors that get to make fertilization decisions. The game is fun to play according to the students and high school teachers that he has done this game with so far. Another fun fact is that the game makes use of 3D printed sperm designed in collaboration with our library’s 3D printers. The outcomes of the game, which can be converted to analyzable data on the spot, beautifully illustrate how the basics of sexual selection work. As Joris Koene explains, “By experiencing the decision making first-hand, the evolutionary principle that lies at the basis of many mating decisions in animals sticks much better with the participants”. All in all, this is a nice example of how fundamental research and modern education can facilitate each other in the lecture room.