On 12th February David and Iain go to the DELOS Conference on Digital Libraries in Tirrenia, a beach resort near Pisa. Benito Mussolini transformed this formerly swampy city into what he called ‘The Pearl of the Mediterranean Sea’. Tirrenia is now a major Italian tourist spot and is popular with young clubbers-so David and Iain are sure to have a good time.

DELOS is a network of excellence on digital libraries and is committed to a vision that digital libraries should ‘enable any citizen to access all human knowledge any time and anywhere, in a friendly, multi-modal, efficient and effective way, by overcoming barriers of distance, language, and culture and by using multiple Internet-connected devices’.

The conference aims to present the latest research and technology in the field of digital libraries and to promote discussion and ‘exchange of ideas’ through various formal and informal satellite meetings.

Clearly this is an ideal conference for promoting and speaking about the Spoken Word, with key figures from around the global digital libraries community in attendance. The Spoken Word’s colleagues, Maureen Lister, from the Universita Di Bologna and Jerry Goldman of Northwestern University in Chicago also have plans to visit the conference, which will be beneficial to continuing and furthering our ties and work with these institutions.