Frankfurter Buchmesse 2024 Preview

By Leah Hinds (Executive Director, Charleston Hub)

The 76th Frankfurter Buchmesse, the largest book fair in the world, will take place October 16-20, 2024. I’m personally looking forward to attending and to all the meetings and events taking place there!

The guest of honor this year is Italy, and their motto is “Roots in the Future.” The Guest of Honor programming will include a diverse range of authors, including many emerging voices, and more than 150 new publications have been translated into German from Italian. Detailed schedule info and more information can be found at https://www.buchmesse.de/en/ highlights/guest-honour.

The Charleston Conference is presenting a micro academic conference event on Friday, October 18, as part of the Publishing Perspectives Forum. The event will be held on the Hall 4.0 Academic Stage and is free and open to all book fair attendees. Please make plans to join us! The day will begin with a networking breakfast at 9:30 am, offering attendees the chance to connect with peers and industry leaders in an informal setting. This is an excellent opportunity to foster new relationships and exchange ideas before the start of the formal sessions. The presentations will launch at 10:00 am with a panel moderated by Sven Fund, Managing Director of Reviewer Credits, called “Putting Theory to Practice: The Case of Artificial Intelligence in Scholarly Publishing.”

AI has been a key topic at every publishing conference since the beginning of 2023 at the latest. Numerous publishers and service providers are experimenting with its application in various areas, whether to reduce costs or more often to increase sales. The panel will use examples from differently structured publishing houses to show which solutions industry participants are working on and how they are applying the different, rapidly developing forms of artificial intelligence in practice. Panel members have been selected from a cohort of participants at a hackathon that took place at ALPSP on September 10.

The second panel will begin at 11:00 am: When more means less? The unanticipated consequences of Scholcomm trends on library resourcing . It will be moderated by Jude Perera, Associate Director, Communication/Engagement, Global Strategic Partnerships Wiley, and features Heather Staines, Senior Consultant, Delta Think, Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe, Professor and Coordinator for Research Professional Development, University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, and Ádám Dér, Head, Scientific Information Provision, Max Planck Digital Library as panelists. Ever feel like you are the proverbial camel — just waiting for the straw that’s going to break your back? As complexity around scholarly communications increases, trends around content access from open research to artificial intelligence clash with practical realities around library staffing, budgets, and time. One real world result may be fewer staff responsible for “keeping the lights on” with routine work processes, as dedicated Open or AI point persons are peeled off for more “glamorous” work. Another may be a seemingly endless allocation of headcount for managing open access agreements/charges or repository deposits to comply with local data mandates — what will happen when those folks retire? Can technology somehow step in to empower fewer people to do more with flat or dwindling resources? Could shared burdens around collections, pooled resources, or shared job functions be another answer? How can publishers and service providers help save the breaking backs of their library partners (as well as researchers and students) enabling them to work smarter, not harder? Join our session for a lively debate around these ever-changing tides. More details at https:// www.charleston-hub.com/thecharleston-conference/welcome/ the-charleston-conference-at-thefrankfurt-book-fair/.

In other big news from the Charleston Conference, an announcement will be made during the week of the Book Fair about a new and exciting venture! We’re pleased to announce the inaugural Charleston Conference Asia. This three-day gathering will bring together librarians, publishers, and vendors to discuss regional and global challenges and opportunities. It will take place at the Royal Orchid Sheraton Hotel, Bangkok Thailand, January 26-28, 2026. The Charleston Conference has always fostered open, meaningful dialogue in an informal setting. We’re thrilled to bring this approach to the library and publishing communities across this region and to share knowledge, spark innovation, and build community. See the full press release for more information, or contact sales@annualreviews.org or Charleston.Conference@igroupnet.com

New at Frankfurt this year is a cultural-political program called “ Frankfurt Calling ” that aims to “bring together international voices from the fields of politics, culture and the arts to explore new approaches to today’s pressing challenges from a global perspective.” Scheduled events range from group conversations to book readings to moderated roundtable discussions, but all have the goal of addressing the pressing issues of current world affairs and forming strategies to shape a more promising future.

In an interview with Publishing Perspectives, President and COO of Frankfurter Buchmesse Jurgen Boos said, “The Frankfurt Calling program is organized by Frankfurter Buchmesse and its partners. Among our 2024 partners — in addition to the United Nations — are Amnesty International, the human rights organization Memorial, and the International Publishers

Association (IPA), just to name a few. Together with these international organizations, a program has been created to address major global issues such as democracy, human rights, diversity, artificial intelligence, and sustainability. Further cultural-political topics will also be discussed — the program includes events about Russia’s war against Ukraine, the Middle East conflict and reactions to it, Black feminism and the global rise of populism. There will be thought-provoking speakers from many regions of the world, such as, for instance, Anne Applebaum, Stella Gaitano, Atef Abu Saif, Roberto Saviano, Yuval Noah Harari, and Kohei Saito.”

Prior to the fair itself, another major event is the STM annual dinner and conference, which will be held October 14-15. This year’s theme is Advancing Trusted Research in the AI Era. The lively, dynamic program can be found at https://www.stmassoc.org/events/stm-dinner-conference-2024-frankfurt/ and features a keynote presentation from Linda S Bishai, Research Staff Member, Institute for Defense Analyses, called Our Future with AI – Getting it Right.

I’m looking forward to all the exciting events and meetings happening in Frankfurt. Hope to see you there!