In April of 2012, students from THEA 418: Costume Design II were charged with collaboratively designing puppet/costumes for William S. Yellowrobe's play "The Council." Yellowrobe is an Assiniboine Native American playwright, and the play is intended for children about the Council of animals who meet to decide what to do about this new animal, Man. Puppets are the perfect medium for this production, but the forms and possibilities of puppets are endless. Fortunately, nearby in Atlanta, the Center for Puppetry Arts curates and preserves not only extant puppets from all kinds of styles, but also scholarly books and materials on the subject of puppet making and performance. This group of students was required to identify the areas where they needed more technical information as well as artistic inspiration. They then used the center's holdings to inform their own collaborative creative solution to the design problem. With reference to the UM IL Goals and SLO's, this project required an advanced process design methodology and narrowing of the research scope to fit the parameters of the design problem. With advance planning before the trip using the Center's online resources, the students then had a unique opportunity to gather primary research from actual objects- a resource frequently used in theatre design- as well as access to esoteric sources not commonly found in academic libraries.