Buffalo Wings and Toasted Ravioli

My paper was a success! In my experience, European conference audiences tend to be pretty quiet and don’t ask a lot of question, but I got a couple of questions and comments out of the audience. The recording was successful, too, so I’ll be podcasting it in next week’s episode.

Giving my paper helped break the ice for me, too. I had the chance to talk with several attendees after my talk. That’s just me, I know–I’m very comfortable with all of my law library colleaques now that I’m an old-timer, but I’m always a little reticent at new conferences where I don’t know anyone and nobody knows me.

The wi-fi hotspot access has been flaky for the last day or so. Now I’m sitting in the excellent Netcafe again, with my own laptop. No more hunting around those funny European keyboards with all their unnecessary punctuation and made-up letters!

Today’s programs were excellent. Ian M. Johnson form Robert Gordon U. in Aberdeen was up just before me, talking about “Electronic Publishing in Librarianship and Information Sciences in Latin America.” That turned out to be the perfect lead-in for my paper on legal publishing, since we both were talking about the peculiarities of different scholarly environments.

Hey, did I mention the ice cream? It’s creamy and delicious, and there’s an ice cream shop every 30 feet here. My favorite is the Kiwi Ice Cream shop, run by some New Zealander ex-pats.

Thanks for your comments on my earlier posts. I’ve been taking more pictures, and I’ll upload them later.

One of the benefits of attending conferences that aren't AALL is remembering that it's possible to put on an annual meeting without lavish parties sponsored by Westlaw and Lexis big-name publishers.  Today we had a special treat: actual coffee for our coffee break!  

Admittedly, there are only about 200 people at this conference.  But on the other hand, there are about 200 restaurants within the city walls, so there's lots of opportunities to explore the local cuisine without having to scrounge up a meal at a publisher-sponsored buffet table.

I always enjoy going to out-of-the-ordinary conferences, but I'm not the most outgoing person you're going to meet.   If I meet and make contacts with one or two new people I wouldn't have met otherwise, I'm happy.  

One interesting program today was presented by Andrew Large, a Brit Information Scientist and former rock bass player, who talked about a research project where he worked with 4th and 6th graders to develop a web portal or interface for kids.  He mentioned that, contrary to the expectation that kids love animation, the kids in the project wanted to keep their portal simple and without unnecessary bells and whistles.  In response to a question from the audience, he noted that, as a result of the weeks-long process of working on the portal, maybe by the end they weren't normal kids anymore–they were now web designers!  Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle in action!

This evening I stopped in briefly at the Memorial to the Dubrovnik Defenders, a small room in the Rector's Palace where are displayed photos of the 200 men killed during the seige of 1991-1992.  There was also a wide-screen TV showing images of the destruction of the city–much more extensive and devastating than I had imagined, seeing how pristine everything is now.  The memorial is quiet and understated, and all the more moving because of that.

Tomorrow I'm giving my presentation.  Wish me luck! 

This just in: Croatian pizza rocks!  Light, thin crust, not at all greasy.  Mine had Croatian ham, bacon, olives, mushrooms, cheese and tomato sauce.  We need a Croatian pizza place in Buffalo.

The weather today is windy and cool.  The sky is cloudy, which with all the white stone is easier on the eyes.  Dubrovnik is more crowded with tourists than it was yesterday.  

I enjoyed this morning's sessions more than yesterday.  The annual LIDA conference is always divided into two themes, one more academic and research-oriented, the other more focused and practical.  This year's second theme is digital libraries for children and schools.  My paper fits in with the more academic side. I'm still working on my presentation.  Whenever I attend a new conference that I'm unfamiliar with, I like to spend the first day or so getting a sense of what kind of presentation is customary.  Everybody here uses Powerpoint, and I've tried to swear off of the evil Powerpoint.  I'm thinking of using MindMap, which at least has the advantage of not having been done to death.

I've uploaded a few dozen photos to my Flickr account here. 

Hey, guys and gals!  I'm currently sitting in the Netcafe Internet Bar in Dubrovnik, Croatia, where I'm attending the 7th Annual Libraries in the Digital Age conference.  

As you'd expect, most of the attendees are Croatian, but there are people here from all over the world.  Europe is well represented, there are a handful of Americans and several Australians (but no Canadians–what's up with that?)  All the presentations are in English, fortunately for me.  That seems to be the language Europeans from different countries use when they get together.  (If you haven't seen it, rent the movie L'Auberge Espagnole.  It's about a bunch of young college students from across Europe sharing an apartment in Barcelona for a year.  Whenever they all get together, they speak English.)

Dubrovnik is a beautiful city, if not very colorful.  It's all white stone, and densely built, with no trees or gardens within the city walls.  I suppose that's why it was able to withstand the 1991-1992 bombing so well.  There was a lot of rebuilding after the war, but now you'd never know there had been a war here.  The city dates back to the 4th century or so, but most of the buildings date from the 17th and 18th cenguries, because the city was largely destroyed in the Great Earthquake of 1667.  I'll post some photos tomorrow.

I have a bad case of jet lag, and slept through most of the presentations today.  My paper is on Wednesday.  I'm thinking of recording my presentation–on Open Access Legal Scholarship and Low Cost Legal Publishing–and podcasting it.  Sounds exciting, huh?

The most important questions: yes, Dubrovnik has excellent food and beer.  I just had a Lasko Temno Pivo, a sweet, dark beer at 5.9% alcohol.  Other beers are stronger, in the Pilsner style, but full-bodied and delicious.  Lots of seafood here, especially squid, and one of the local specialties is black risotto, which gets its color from squid ink.  I haven't tried that yet, but I'll report back later.  Italian pasta is also popular, and pizza is the favorite cheap meal.
Internet access is good here.  There are several Internet cafes where you can bring your laptop or use one of their computers, and there are also several Wi-Fi hotspots around town.

That's all for now.  I'll report on some of the programs tomorrow.

From Cute Overload: Says Padraic C.: “My parents were taking out some recyclables, when a few old cardboard boxes fell off the stack. By the time they got back from the end of the driveway, they saw this”

Unless you get the Cartoon Network, are a fan of anime, and have TiVO: Cosby Bebop.

Here's Jim Hightower at AlterNet:

In 1928, Justice Louis Brandeis wrote that the real threat to American freedom was not from an outside assault, but from the devious manipulations of our own misguided leaders. "The greatest dangers to liberty," he observed, "lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning, but without understanding."

Nearly 80 years after Brandeis's warning, the zealots have been brought in from the far-right fringe on the golden chariot of George W, and they've shown that they have no understanding of the essence of America, which includes our hard-won liberties, our rule of law and our system of checked-and-balanced governmental power.

But these men of zeal — Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al. — are hardly well-meaning. They are deliberately and determinedly striving to impose the AntiAmerica on our own land — an unrecognizable America of supreme executive authority, constant surveillance of the citizenry, secret government and suppression of dissent. Their chief weapon is fear. They feverishly wave the bloody flag of 9/11, shouting that the citizenry must surrender liberties or be attacked again by The Madmen, that we mustn't question authority for this only encourages The Madmen, that all government operations must be cloaked in a dark veil of secrecy to keep The Madmen off balance, and that executive and police power must drastically expand to protect us from The Madmen.

Read more. 

I  chatted with several Canadian colleagues at the CALL (Canadian Association of Law Libraries) meeting in Edmonton a couple of weeks ago, trying to get a sense of what Canadians think of America these days.  Being the friendly, tactful folks they are, they generally said nice things, but were clearly concerned.   They have no idea how frightened the situation truly is.

Steve Pizzo at AlterNet:

I've never doubted for a second that the government would spy on its own citizens — any government — not just ours. Information is, as the saying goes, power — always has been, always will be. So, as much as my civil libertarian side hates it, the realist in me shrugs each time a new piece of evidence surfaces that they are up to doing just that.

Or more precisely trying to do just that.

As I downed the final dregs of a cold Corona the other day, I recalled all the stories I had written over the years about monumentally expensive failed government computer system upgrades. In fact, hard as I thought, I couldn't recall a single story lauding a government agency for a successful computer project. Not one. Ever….

Which brings me to the theme of this rant.

Will the real U.S. government please stand up?

• Are you the black-helicopter flying, eyes in the sky, ears to the ground, all-knowing Big Brother government?
• Or are you really the Maxwell Smart, bumbling, money-wasting, last-to-know-anything government?

Help me out here.For starters, I find it difficult to imagine that it can be both at once. Are we to believe that within the same government whose top national police agency, the FBI, can't install a computer system that works, another agency, the NSA, can? It's possible, but nothing in my direct experience with government agencies would cause me to believe it.

Read more here.

Listen here.

From The Poor Man Institute:

OPPRESSION!

After 34 years of college teaching, I thought I had heard just about every imaginable student complaint. Last week, however, a freshman in my 300-seat US History Since 1865 course came in to discuss her exam with one of the graders and proceeded to work herself into a semi-hissy over the fact that we had spent four class periods(one of them consisting of a visit from Taylor Branch) discussing the civil rights movement.

“I don’t know where he’s getting all of this,” she complained,”we never discussed any of this in high school.” One might have let the matter rest here as simply an example of a high school history teacher’s sins of omission being visited on the hapless old history prof. had the student not informed the TA in an indignant postcript, ” I’m not a Democrat! I don’t think I should have to listen to this stuff!”

Universities need to start opening departments of wingnuttery, where you can write your PhD thesis (IN ALL CAPS!!) about how slavery never, ever, ever happened, and even if it did happen it wasn’t as bad as people make it sound and the Bible says it’s OK. Seriously: it’s the only way.