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Wow, great question, and the answer is more readily apparent than we think. Virtually all the books I've purchased that were published as companions to museum shows have very in-debth notes as to methods and materials.
Very substantive information can be found in the introductions and footnotes of such books as well.
For instance, "The Drawings of Filippino Lippi and His Circle" published for a show at the Met, is loaded with information on the materials of specific drawings.
It might just be phrased in a language that we've lost: "Pen and brown ink and brown wash, heightened with white gouache, over traces of leadpoint or black chalk, with traces of pen-and-brown-ink framing outlines, on paper rubbed with reddish chalk around main figure." Rich research for experimentation, certainly.
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