The IPA’s IPL Committee meeting was the opportunity to catch up on the work done by the different sub-groups on sustainability, diversity and inclusion, accessibility and the world book capital city programme. IPA members then had the opportunity to present their own progress reports and to discuss IPA’s objectives for the next 12-24 months.
In parallel to this was an excellent session on Artificial Intelligence: New Standards, Challenges and Opportunities for Innovation at the Italian stand featuring the Federation of European Publishers’ Quentin Deschandelliers, RELX’s Elizabeth Crossick and moderated by AAP’s Maria Pallante.
FEP also held their traditional Rendez-vous on Thursday lunchtime with presentations on Bizili by Reprobel (a new copyright licence for businesses in Belgium), the state of play on copyright from the Head of the European Commission’s Copyright Unit, and finally a new study from Germany on e-lending.
Racing from the Congress centre to the International Stage where UN Publications ran two excellent sessions: From Climate Science to Climate Action followed by Getting back to the facts: How to protect information integrity? – both subjects which will be covered at the the International Publishers Congress in December where United Nations Under-Secretary-General Melissa a Fleming is a keynote speaker.
Next stop, the Pavilion where IPA worked with the Frankfurter Buchmesse to put together a session under the title Democracy Depends on Reading which looked at the trinity of freedoms – the freedom to read, the freedom to publish and the freedom of expression. Moderated by Publishing Perspectives’ Porter Anderson, the line-up included PRH’s Anke E. Steinecke, Jean Poderos of Editions Courtes et Longues, Felicia Hoffman of DTV Publishing and Ege Dündar of PEN International. The session went into the practical detail of PRH’s work in the USA to push back against the book bans there, but also looked at the challenges faced in France with Poderos lamenting that with all of the issues our society’s face, that we should spend more time working together than admonishing each other. Felicia Hofmann, social media leader at German publisher DTV spoke about what she sees through her work and underlining the responsibility publishers have to publish different points of view and take people out of their bubbles. Ege Dündar made an impassioned plea for the youth to be given more opportunities fight against the shrinking space for freedom of expression. He noted that, while our differences matter, young people realise we need to work together but need support to create these spaces. He was also able to share the news that PEN international had created a young writers committee and a Tomorrow Club.
You can watch the session here.
At the same time as Democracy Depends on Reading, IPA’s Secretary General, José Borghino and the Chair of the IPA’s Educational Publishers Forum, Brian Gilsenan, were speaking on the Asia stage about educational publishing and OECD’s PISA rankings.
The day closed for IPA with the Brazilian and Mexican receptions gathering big crowds and giving us the opportunity to share more details on the 34th International Publishers Congress, being held from 3-6 December.
Friday will be IPA’s traditional Open Educational Publishers Forum Meeting and further meetings with members as the fair opens to the general public.
