ALA Midwinter Meeting, Denver
ACRL ESS Germanists and Romance Discussion Groups Joint Meeting
Sunday, February 11, 2018
1:00 – 2:30pm
Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel, Room Tower Court B
Convener
- Diana Brooking, University of Wisconsin, dbrooking@uw.edu
Attendees
- There were about 40 people in attendance.
Minutes
I. Welcome and Introductions
II. Discussion
- Highlights of the Frankfurt Book Fair (Oct. 2017) were discussed. The book fair was described by those who have attended (some for many years) for those who were hadn’t experienced it. To summarize, Frankfurt is a very large, international fair, it is not just about the German publishing industry. There is a lot of business conducted there, so in some ways it is not oriented towards librarians. However, Casalini reported that they regularly go to Frankfurt to meet with Italian publishers (!) since it is a good opportunity to meet everyone in one place at one time. One tip was to avoid the weekend, when the fair is open to the public (too crowded). Many international booths are already packing up on Saturday. For 2017 there was a new section for digitally oriented services, people dealing with rights issues, user interface design, Google and Wikipedia had booths there. Also the section devoted to libraries has “quadrupled” over the last few years. There were great presentations there, especially on the latest news from the German DEAL negotiations with ejournal package vendors. The guest country in 2017 was France, which brought even more ESS members to Frankfurt than usual. Some said they could have spent the whole week in the French pavilion.
- Discussion then moved to other European book fairs: for example, Barcelona, Salon du livre in Paris, Geneva and Leipzig (more for the public), and Moscow (started during Perestroika, strong Central Asian presence). The CRL Symposium held also In Frankfurt at the same time as the Book Fair was discussed, as well as the tours and meetings that had been arranged in conjunction with it (especially the meeting with Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung staff). The meeting ended with brainstorming for ideas for the next Discussion Group meeting in New Orleans.
Minutes submitted by Diana Brooking, Germanists Convener, dbrooking@uw.edu.