After attending the Global Interoperability and Linked Data Workshop, a meeting of the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) in Amsterdam, Ed Summers from the Library of Congress reflected on the relationship between the leadership style of the steering committee and their commitment to developing the DPLA as a generative platform for rich discovery environments:
“The thing I learned at the meeting in Amsterdam is that this nebulousness is by design–not by accident. The DPLA steering committee aren’t really pushing a particular solution that they have in mind. In fact, there doesn’t seem to be a clear consensus about what problem they are trying to solve. Instead the steering committee seem to be making a concerted effort to keep an open, beginners-mind about what a Digital Public Library of America might be. […] Keeping an open mind in situations like this takes quite a bit of effort. There is often an irresistable urge to jump to particular use cases, scenarios or technical solutions, for fear of seeming ill informed or rudderless. I think the DPLA should be commended for creating conversations at this formative stage, instead of solutions in search of a problem.”
