Far and away
There are lots of bits of news to ruminate, comment on or simply list, but it's a bit dicey to do that on machines that are not your own, on keyboards where not everything is where your fingers assume they will be.
Aside and ex. 1: It is hard not to write email to the spouse that includes the following: "I love zou. Zou make me so happz. I canät wait to see you again. *kiß*" Okay, I'm just funnin' you all on the last thing. (And assuming any of you are as conversant in German as I was 3 weeks ago, "ß" is the old German letter for "ss" ... apparently, it is not used as much in modern writing, but the street signs still use it (because German for "street" is "strasse" or "straße".
Aside and ex. 2: I meant to put the above aside in brackets ... but it took me five minutes to find them.
Lots of Internet cafes abound in Central Munich, but wireless ... not so much. Also, Firefox does not appear to have penetrated the Black Forest of Bavaria (which is actually southeast of here, I think, and thus no excuse, but hey). Not seeing the presence of Apple, either ... all the cafes I've visited have PCs with Windows XP and I haven't even seen ads for iPods here ... ads for iPods pretty much blanketed Paris, despite the DRM issues going on between Apple and France.
Next week, I hope to make forays into the Bayern StaatBibliotek ... the Bavaria State Library. I actually went inside today, but only checked out the first floor. It has a documentation centre (for photocopying and the like), lockers you can rent for one euro, a bank of terminals for perusing the library's website (they are beginning an English version) ... and I think I saw an RFID reader. I saw an older gentleman leave with a stack of books in his hand. He stopped at a little keypad, pushed a button, then got out his wallet, waved it under the keypad (didn't take anything out of the wallet, just waved the whole thing) and continued on his merry way.
If I get up the nerve to ask if I can take pictures within the library (there was a sign, and the sign said something about photography and I didn't see the word "verboten" and maybe if I can convince them that I don't want to photograph any of the books ... see why this takes nerve on my part?), I will put up photos on Flickr and see if anyone in my contacts knows a lot more German than I do ... which, admittedly, is not hard.
It's been great to see so many posts about ALA Annual in New Orleans. I get the idea that the conference, due to its location, was quite different from previous ones, and I do feel somewhat guilty about missing it. Strangely, though, when I visit various blogs to find out about the programming ... I find some of what I'm looking for, but not all. There's a fair bit about the major programming and the tech programming. I'm not a public or school librarian, so I have not searched out the blogs that would focus on those areas of ALA programming. But where is the coverage of copyright sessions? What's happening in intellectual freedom? Was there a net neutrality panel? Any new announcements/areas of concern from OITP or OIF? I know that the gagged librarians of Library Connection were honored (yay!) ... but what else went on in the world of policy at ALA?
Maybe law school has turned parts of my brain into puddles of goo (actually, there is no maybe about that), but if there are blog pearls that deal with the areas that are near and dear to my heart, I'd be most appreciative if you pointed me at them. Danke schoen.