ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries C&RL News ■ D ecem ber 2000 / 1007 CONFERENCE CIRCUIT ACRL promotes American libraries at the Frankfurt Book Fair Highlights from the world’s largest book fair by Mazena Pasek and Gordon B. Anderson A t this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair, which ran from October 17 through October 23, 2000, three ACRL representatives, funded by a grant from the ACRL Board of Directors, led an exhibit promoting American college and university libraries at the world’s largest trade fair devoted to one theme—the book. How large was the 52nd Frankfurt Book Fair? An article in Ameri­ can Libraries described the 1999 Frankfurt Book Fair: “Try to imagine O’Hare Airport around Christmas, but with the crowds elbowing each other to catch not a flight, but a glimpse of Tom Wolfe, Toni Morrison, or Marcia Pankake (Un the new Nobel prizewin­ Melissa Cast (ACRL), ner, German writer Public Library), and Günter Grass.”' York Public Library). "Everybody com es to F ra n k fu rt because everybo dy co m e s to Frankfurt" The book fair’s official motto was in evidence everywhere. According to the Fair’s Web site at w w w .frankfurt-bookfair.com , “every­ body” totaled some 300,000 visitors (a 7.5% increase over last year’s figure), canvass­ ing an exhibition area of 190,000 square meters. Some 380,000 books, magazines, maps, multimedia products, and art works from 6,643 individual e x ­ hibitors— publishers, multimedia producers and art galleries— from 105 countries were on display. Writers and publishers negotiated the buying and selling of rights of publication, distribution, and trans­ lation. More than 2 ,1 0 0 versity of Minnesota), enise Hibay (New York f a ir - r e la t e d e v e n ts Marzena Pasek (New took place in six days; som e 1,100 authors w e re fe a tu r e d in book-signings, readings, lectures, sympo­ sia, and receptions. Guest o f honor, Po­ land, was involved in almost 1,000 events. This year’s winner of the fair’s prestigious Peace Prize of the German Book-Trade was i D I About the a u th o rs| Marzena Pasek is European Studies bibliographer at the New York Public Library, e-mail: mpasek@nypl.org, and Gordon B. Anderson is reference librarian and European Studies bibliographer at University o f Kansas Libraries, e-mail: ganderson@ukans.edu http://www.frankfurt-bookfair.com mailto:mpasek@nypl.org mailto:ganderson@ukans.edu 1008 / C&RL News ■ December 2000 Jim Campbell (University of Virginia) and Ross Atk U n iversity) conversing at the "K n o w le d g e Knowledge Management in the 21st Century" sy the Algerian writer-in-exile Assia Djebar. The fair’s opening ceremonies featured the for­ eign ministers of Germany, Joschka Fischer, and Poland, Wladyslaw Bartoszewski; the mayor of Frankfurt, Petra Roth; the president of the German Publishers & Booksellers As­ sociation, Roland Ulmer. Two of Poland’s sev­ eral Nobel laureates, the poets Wislawa Szymborska and Czeslaw Milosz, read from their works. The In te rn a tio n a l B o o k se llers and Lib rarian s C en te r ACRL’s exhibit occupied a strategic spot in the International Booksellers and Librar­ ians Center (IBLC). Started in the early 1980s by Andreas Werner of the Univer­ sity of Frankfurt, the IBLC has becom e the place where international booksellers, li­ brarians, and vendors can m eet at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The ACRL exhibit was led by Melissa Cast, ACRL’s director of Member Services; Marzena Pasek (New York Public Libraiy), represent­ ing the Western European Specialists Section; and Gordon Anderson (University of Kan­ sas), representing the Slavic & East European Section. Visitors to the ACRL exhibit included pub­ lishers and book distributors, chiefly from Eu­ rope; librarians and libraiy-school faculty, also mainly from Europe; and visitors from Asian countries and from the United States. We offered our guests a wide variety of printed literature for examination: for ex­ ample, CHOICE and C&RL News; titles from ACRL’s series P ublications in Librarianship; WESS’s R eferen ce Reviews Europe; and the new U.S. journal Slavic & East E u ropean Inform ation Resources (SEEIR). Our visitors most often asked about ACRL’s position on the impact of electronic technologies on library col­ lections and services, and in response we handed out many copies of “ACRL’s In­ formation Literacy Compe­ tency Standards for Higher Education” and “Guidelines inson (Cornell for Distance Learning Ser­ Tran sfer and vices.’’ With a sturdy laptop mposium. and a good Internet connec­ tion, we showed our visitors a wide variety of electronic resources and reference and in­ formation services. Clearly, North American research libraries are the world’s model for aggressively exploiting the latest technology and services to provide better access to col­ lections and resources beyond our own li­ braries. We are very grateful for the eight other WESSies— Roger Brisson (Penn State Univer­ sity), Jim Campbell (University of Virginia), Jeff Garrett (Northwestern University), Denise Hibay (New York Public Library), AnnMarie Mitchell (University of California, Berkeley), Mike Olson (Harvard University), Marcia Pankake (University of Minnesota), and Brian Skib (University of Michigan)— made our booth their home base. They volunteered many an hour to staffing the exhibit so that we, too, could see something of the fair for ourselves. Our colleagues are excellent ACRL representatives. " K n o w le d g e T ra nsfe r" sym p o siu m This year Werner and Jeffrey Garrett (this year’s chair of WESS), organized a two-day conference at the IBLC entitled “Knowledge Transfer and Knowledge Management in the 21st Century: New Structures and Solutions for Universities and Libraries.” The U.S. speakers included Ross Atkinson, deputy university librarian at Cornell Univer­ sity; James Campbell, director of Library Tech­ nology Services at the University of Virginia; Peter Givler, executive director of the Asso­ ciation of American University Presses; Mar­ tin Mueller, professor of English and Classics at Northwestern University; and Ann Okerson, C&RL News * Decem ber 2000 / 1009 associate director of the Yale University Li­ brary System. Michael Keller, Stanford Uni­ versity librarian and the p u blish er o f HìghWirePress, the very successful electronic publishing enterprise of Stanford University Libraries, added important North American expertise to the discussions. European speakers and participants in­ cluded library directors from the universi­ ties of Bolzano, Essen, Frankfurt, Halle, Mannheim, Milan, Siegen, Stuttgart, and Warsaw, and an official from a German state ministry of education. This first trans­ atlantic librarians’ conference at the Frank­ furt Book Fair was moderated in English and in G erm an by P r o fe s s o r P e te r Lockemann o f the University of Karlsruhe. Simultaneous interpreters working U.N.- style through headphones made sure that language was never an obstacle, even dur­ ing the lively discussions following the presentations. Conference participants in Germany and the United States shared remarkably simi­ lar concerns and expectations about the future of e-books and electronic serials, and the degree of saturation that technol­ ogy has reached very similar levels on both sides of the Atlantic. European participants were impressed, however, with the degree to which their American counterparts use their regional consortia to advantage in dealing with vendors. This subject figures to become the theme for next year’s symposium, which the organizers are already at work prepar­ ing. U.S. participants, for their part, were im­ pressed by the Germans’ sophisticated re­ search analyzing actual use (and non-use) of electronic journals. • The proceedings of the 1st International Symposium of the IBLC will be published in cooperation with the European University Institute of Florence by Casalini libri. An online version will also be made available via the Frankfurt Book Fair and WESS Web sites. N otes 1. Jeffrey Garrett, “U.S. Librarians Show Their Stuff at Frankfurt Book Fair,” A m erican Libraries (December 1999): 28-29. 2. A photo album of ACRL’s Frankfurt Book Fair e x h ib it is a v a ila b le at: http:// www. library. northwestern. edu/collections/ garrett/frankfurt/frankfurtOO.html. ■