The Omeka powered site, though slick, has a very impersonal feeling to it. As though it was designed to be used by used by any institution. It is visually attractive, but it feels a little too slick like it is selling a movie. Where the old library site feels like a 19th century downtown, the Omeka site seems more like the strip where the newest big box store is hawking chinese made goods. Don’t get me wrong, the photos themselves have true value, they are meant to be looked at — and all users should appreciate that they are here preserved. But why are they tagged with such silly descriptors as “earring” and “hat.” I understand that Omeka is a powerful new tool allowing institutions to install and update digital library exhibitions of their own content — but there is still something to be said about old fashioned html sites with their quirks and personal touches. I don’t think you should be knocking historical websites, as they themselves are part of the history of the library. I am also nervous that the quest for so-called good design continues to push aside meaningful debate from the discourse of digital humanities. The continual demands for new installs, 1.02, rss, refresh, etc. etc. clutters the field from the transfer of human ideas and digital humanities here runs the risk of losing its humanity.

But seriously, I’m so happy that digital humanities (spurred by you) does indeed seem to be taking design more into account. I’m thinking seriously of going back to school in human-computer interaction just so that I can get a good grounding in interface design principles and technologies, then dedicating myself to cleaning up digital library and digital humanities project interfaces.

For most users, the interface *is* the content, just as for most readers (as Lincoln points out), the prose *is* the ideas. I couldn’t explain any better why it is that swerving into interface design seems entirely logical for this English Ph.D. with years of experience teaching (or trying to teach) writing.

I will say, too, that I’m kind of a usability testing addict, and it has occurred to me more than once that there ought to be a similar observation-based way of testing the “usability” of writing. Hapless academic web site builders are often startled and appalled by seeing how difficult and unpleasant they’ve made it for users to navigate their web sites; if writers could only spy upon their readers in the same way, we might get some real breakthroughs in composition studies.