Best I can tell you is to make sure you can get your stuff OUT of whatever tools you're using now, because they are almost certainly not gonna be what you're using in five years.

The situation right now rots. It will, however, improve. The Manakin UI project for DSpace is doing weird and interesting stuff. Fedora is putting together a front-end. Greenstone is making noises about interfaces for DSpace. Right now, though, we just have to wait it all out.