I'm back from Minneapolis and the Digital Libraries Federation conference.
Two things struck me. One is the phenomenal amount of work being done by some very smart people around digitisation, metadata and interoperability standards. These people are seriously laying down the groundwork for us all to have the libraries we want in the next ten years. I hope their home institutions realise how lucky they are to have them on board when they could easily take the Mountain View dollar.
The second was how little work is being done around innovative UI design (which I suppose is why I was invited along...). To my way of thinking, how you surface all this content is critical to a users experience and that experience will directly influence traffic and funding. Speaking to some delegates it seems this is something many people just haven't got around to yet.
Oh yes, there was a third thing - if someone suggests Minneapolis as a holiday destination, think very hard before accepting. I mean, snow in May...?
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