The Imaging Science and Technology (IS&T) Archiving Conference is annually held in various destinations throughout the world, bringing together "an international community of imaging experts and technicians as well as curators, managers, and researchers from libraries, archives, museums" (as cited in the Preliminary Program). This year, the National Archives hosted the conference in Washington, DC, and the program focused on aspects of the digitization of cultural heritage and archiving. The Preliminary Program also explains that, "The conference presents the latest research results on digitization and curation, provides a forum to explore new strategies and policies, and reports on successful projects that can serve as benchmarks in the field."

I was given the opportunity to present a paper I wrote focusing on the Wellcome Library, located in London, UK, where I studied last summer. I was selected to be a part of the Interactive Paper presentations. Not only was this an outstanding professional experience, it was opportune timing to network and meet other information professionals as I was graduating this May and entering into the job market. I designed a poster for the conference and also gave a brief PowerPoint presentation to conference attendees.

The conference began with short courses on Tuesday, April 19th, which consisted of lectures, demonstrations, and discussions to provide a brief overview of topics such as computations photography techniques, scanner and camera imaging performance, program management of digitization and curation for cultural heritage professionals, fundamentals of image and video compression, special imaging capture and processing, assessing formats for preservation and use of web archives, and digital collection development.

On Wednesday, April 20th, I was scheduled to give my Interactive Paper presentation: Going Digital at the Wellcome Library: "The Evolution of Digital Imaging and Innovation." I was one of twelve Interactive Paper presenters. Following the presentations, there was an Interactive Paper session and exhibition, where I stood by my poster, met other professionals, and explained my work. During this time, I was thrilled to meet Dave Thompson, head of digital projects at the Wellcome Library. He was appreciative of my research and emphasized that it is important to bring awareness of where the digital "evolution" began to better understand how best to direct it in the future. Other lectures were given after the paper exhibitions that covered advanced imaging techniques, asset management, and preservation formats and frameworks.

The following day, April 21st, additional lectures discussed imaging standards and quality assurance, strategies and workflows, and dissemination and use. In the afternoon, the conference organized behind-the-scenes tours. I had the opportunity to see the work that goes into the preservation department at the National Gallery of Art in order to make digital representations of paintings as close to the originals as technologically possible.

Finally, on Friday, April 22nd, the lectures in the morning were more closely related to my area of interest, covering metadata standards and implementation. The afternoon focused on image color science and analysis tools and the role of digital collections in scholarly communication. Other highlights from Friday include a job offer from the Defense Imagery Management Operations Center (USA). I was invited to lunch and spoke with Julia Hickey, an archivist from Defense Media Activity.

Overall, it was an overwhelmingly positive experience and I am profoundly grateful for Wayne State University's generous support in making this trip a possibility.