Powerful Points

/ 16 April 2004

I am a pretty visual person and appreciate a well laid out graphical representation of an issue. I find one of the masters of our field to be Herbert Van de Sompel. I didn’t attend his session today on Federations of Institutional Repositories, but I see the handouts in the CNI packet and am struck again by what lean, direct, and illuminating illustrations he comes up with. I don’t know whether he makes this stuff up himself or employs some graphic talent on the back end, but his touch has been so consistent over the years in many contexts that I suspect the former. I hear many people laud the interface of SFX, few of whom realize just how much it is the vision of Herbert, who showed “rough” versions of SFX many years before it became a commercial product with virtually the same interface it still enjoys. If you want to see what I consider PowerPoint well-used, take a look at a presentation by Herbert some day.

By the way, his work on new roles for MPEG-21 & OAI & OpenURL in federating repositories is quite interesting, thinking way outside the box. Take a look at the D-Lib article he and a few colleagues wrote for a taste.

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