april06b.indd conference circuit Joy Pile The Frankfurt Book Fair Highlights from the 57th annual fair Pageantry, prizes, and crowds—the 57th Frankfurt Book Fair, October 19-23, 2005, had all of those things and intellectual con- tent, too. The opening celebrations included digital services librarian, Cornell University; and Joy Pile, reference and instruction librarian for foreign languages and music, Middlebury College. remarks by Petra Roth, Lord Mayor of the City of Frankfurt; Dieter Schormann, chairman of the German Book- sellers and Publishers Association; represent- ing Korea, the Guest of Honor at this year’s fair, Ko Un, a Korean author; and Lee Hae Chan, prime minister of the Republic of Korea. “A positive mood among the exhibi- tors, a dedicated Guest of Honour Korea, a huge audi- ence, and wonder- ful laureates—the Frankfurt Book Fair At the ACRL booth clockwise from the center: Joy Pile (Middlebury College), Sarah Howe (Cornell University), Marcia Pankake, (University Of Min­ nesota), Heather Moulaison, (The College of New Jersey), Ann Snoeyenbos (John Hopkins Press), Beau David Case (University of Michigan), Vir­ ginia Cole (Cornell University), Eric Nils Lindquist (University of Maryland), John Howard Barnett (Gettysburg College). ACRL w as o ne of 7,200 exhibitors from 1 01 c ountries housed in a total of 8 halls, most of which had three fl oors of booths, exhibits, au- ditoriums, and dining areas. The ACRL booth was in close proxim- ity to the American Embassy booth and the G erman L ibrary Association. Those of us who staf fed the exhibit enjoyed being able to pro- mote ACRL and ALA to guests who visited the booth. We distrib- uted copies of Ameri­ was a good mixture of politics, culture, and business this year” said Schor mann in com- ments to the press at the close of the fair.1 This was the sixth, and probably last, year ACRL sponsored a booth, and awarded stipends to four librarians: John Howard Barnett, collections librarian at Gettysburg College; Heather Moulaison, cataloging/ modern languages librarian, College of New Jersey; V irginia Cole, reference and can Libraries and post-its promoting the next ACRL conference to visitors who otherwise would not have known about these events and resources. Visitors seemed to appreciate having a face to associate with the concept of “American Joy Pile is reference and instruction librarian for foreign languages and music at Middlebury College, e-mail: pile@middlebury.edu © 2006 Joy Pile April 2006 243 C&RL News mailto:pile@middlebury.edu At the Harrassowitz Dinner, Knut Dorn, president of Otto Harrassowitz Gmb, and his wife Renata, examine a rare facsimile edition given to them by Beau David Case (center) and the University of Michigan. academic librarianship”; they also seemed to appreciate being able to take with them sou- venir pens and note cards from our various colleges and universities. In total, we spoke with about 80 international visitors, who were interested in everything from how to send out a mass mailing to distribute a book to a refer- ence question about locating U.S. statistics in the hotel and tourism industry. The booth staffers also talked with librarians from other countries and people interested in attending library school in the United States. The fair af fords librarians the chance to pick up catalogs from more obscure pub- lishers worldwide, learn about new uses of technologies (such as the audible.com or audible.de service for recorded books), attend sessions focused from the point of view of publishers, and familiarize themselves with new authors by attending their readings. Sev- eral of us attended a session on the process of securing licensing rights to translate and publish a book in another language, and a couple of sessions on Google print.2 Beau David Case, fi eld librarian for clas- sical studies at the University of Michigan, expertly shepherded the stipend recipi- ents around Frankfurt, taught them to use Frankfurt’s excellent public transportation system—the U-bahns, S-bahns and regional trains—and arranged for a night at the opera and tours of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Archive and the Deutsche Bank. At the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Jochen Ganzmann described their online text archive, databases that they support, and products they help the newspaper produce for the market. He demonstrated the online archives reporters have at their d isposal t o c heck f acts a nd r efer- ences and showed us the paper clipping archive—which is no longer active, since those resources are now online, saving both staff time for the archive and the time of reporters. Reinhard Frost, at Deutsche Bank, chron- icled the history of the bank,3 focusing par- ticularly on the late 19th century, when the bank was a primary investor in the building of the Northern Pacific Railway. The primary documents of this period, which are available to researchers, include letters and diaries, as well as some fi nancial information. Several American librarians attending the fair also went to a concurrent conference, the 5th Frankfurt Scientifi c Symposium, which was focused on alter native publishing and the scholarly information economy.4 The Americans attending the Frankfurt Book Fair would also like to extend our most heartfelt thanks to Knut Dor n and his family and Otto Harrassowitz for sponsoring a sumptuous feast cooked by a chief with an “Austrian touch” in Wiesbaden.5 Notes 1. Details and infor mation on the Frank- furt Book Fair are available at www. frankfurt-book-fair.com 2. See Heather Moulaison’s Nov. 1, 2005, posting on acrlblog.org. 3. Further infor mation about Deuts che Bank and its history are available at www. deutsche-bank.com 4. For more details on this sympo- sium see www.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/messe /symposium2005/abstracts.html 4. Infor mation about Otto Harrassowitz and their services can be found at www. harrassowitz.de/index.html. 244C&RL News April 2006 www.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/messe http:deutsche-bank.com http:acrlblog.org http:frankfurt-book-fair.com http:audible.de http:audible.com