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Frankfurt Book Fair Press Photo: Peter Hirth
David Di Gregorio covering the Frankfurt Book Fair. Pictured here attending the opening press conference.

HD video coverage of the 2006 Frankfurt Book Fair broadcast on Channel 77. Click here to view.

 "Integrating Broadcast Media
 in Library Media Centers"
in Bookmark Click Below:


Cable Access Broadcasting
featured in August 04 issue of
Media & Methods Magazine

Redefining the Library Media Center:
High School Library Media Centers
can Strive to be a Microcosm of Frankfurt Book Fair

     In 2003 and 2006 I had the good fortune of attending the Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany, the world's largest annual book event.  With about 7,000 exhibitors from 113 countries, this event celebrates print and other media from all around the globe.   At the center of the fair, held in the world's second largest convention facility in Frankfurt, Germany, you will find electronic media to include major television and radio stations all broadcasting programs featuring authors and their books, essentially turning Germany into one large learning community.  The presence of authors, poets, scholars and intellectuals from all over the world distinguishes this exciting annual event from all others I have attended.   It is a wondrous mix!  School library media centers can use this event as a kind of model because they share similar elements; print media, non print media, displays, and in some cases television broadcasting.

     I was able to become more acquainted with a wide variety of publishers, meet, speak and interview authors, and attend very unique book events.  The power and excitement surrounding this special combination of media and personalities as they all work with each other was tremendous. Also, the international nature of this event is especially important for U.S. educators to experience.  Equally as important, I believe, this event illustrates the practicality and benefits of combining traditional print and non-print media with broadcast media in all its forms to include local access television, videoconferencing, and broadcast Internet in high school library media centers, with the potential of creating learning communities within our own school districts and beyond. 

     The power of broadcast can enable individual library media centers to share their unique resources with community and one another, encourage more interest in books and reading, and this can bring us all to a truer, deeper, and more respectful understanding of the world and reality.  As the circumference widens, through today's broadcast technology, the center can become more defined.  Our library media centers can become more unique unto themselves and even more useful than they already are.  Having the mix of media found at the Frankfurt Book Fair, only on a smaller scale, a microcosm of the Frankfurt Book Fair, in high school media centers, I feel, is tremendously practical, cost effective, and beneficial to students.

David Di Gregorio
Supervisor Library Media Services