Press: “Designing a DPLA for everyone”

“I’m writing about all of this here because I think the grand, idealistic, unifying schemes of Neurath can be informative in the design process for the Digital Public Library of America.  It is widely accepted that the 4000+ images Arntz created for Neurath’s Isotype are beautiful and still individually useful, but in today’s networked, global information economy there are simply too many nuanced cultural considerations for an entirely pictographic language to communicate well.  The goal of this DPLA is to make the digital collections of America’s libraries, museums and other cultural institutions accessible and useful to people of all different backgrounds across this country.  The diversity and enormity of the target user group is astounding… because they are the same target that Neurath was aiming to communicate with: EVERYONE.”

From Nate Hill’s post on the Public Library Association Blog, “Designing a DPLA for everyone”