We have participated actively in the fair since 1992, when OBS brought the first Internet link to the Frankfurt Book Fair, and over the years have delivered papers and online projects there as well:
- “A Penny for your Thoughts: Copyright into Cogniright”
- “Internet Publishing in a Borderless Environment: Bookworms into Butterflies”
- We planned, built and implemented the world’s first “Internet Rights Auction (TIRA)” in cooperation with the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1996
Online publishing represents a qualitative change in publishing, not just another file format. It is changing the way we communicate, think, write, and do business. It remains to be determined how this sudden and mass migration of our recorded culture to an intangible, online environment will affect global literacy, the bedrock of the publishing industry. What does it mean for book publishing, for example, when people communicate by beaming photos and iPod tunes to one another, text messaging each other with their thumbs while driving a car, instead of giving undivided concentration, attention, and thought to the acts of reading and writing? OBS attends Frankfurt this year to learn how our peers worldwide are responding to our rapidly unfolding online metamorphosis, and to share what we have learned after 25 years of e-publishing.