Florida State University and the Panhandle Library Access Network are organizing a two-day conference on 21 – 22 July also on ‘The Future of the Book’. The aim of the conference is “to explore the significance of emergent digital technologies on the dissemination and reading of text for research and pleasure.”

Bob Stein, founder of the Institute for the Future of the Book and the Voyager Company and one of our speakers this weekend, is one of the keynotes. Lynn Sutton, Ph.D. is Dean of the Z. Smith Reynolds Library at the University Wake Forest, there to talk about libraries: ‘As Libraries Change: Keep Your Eyes on the Readers’. Another featured speaker is Elaine Treharne, a lecturer of Book History, bringing philosophy into the mix: ‘You Kant Touch This: the Immanent Book and the Digital Age’.

For more information: http://www.lib.fsu.edu/thefutureofthebook/

The second UNESCO World Forum on Culture and Cultural Industries will be organized at Lombardia, Italy on 6-8 June. The theme of Focus 2011 is ‘The Book Tomorrow: the future of the Written Word’.

There are three main themes: “The E-book Economy”, “Author’s Right in the Digital Era” and “The Digital Library” - and nine workshops: “Blog versus Newspaper”, “Future of writing and reading”, “Changes in the production and distribution chain”, “Copyright versus copy-left”, “Fair use and Creative Commons”, “Preserving the digital memory”, “The library as public service”, “Good and bad in public and private partnership” and  “The risks of digitization”.

Keynotes are Robert Darnton, Milad Doueihi and Antonio Skarmeta. Other speakers include Esther Wojcicki, vice chairman of the board of directors of Creative Comnnons and the director of the Frankfurt Book Fair Jürgen Boos. Editor and publisher James Bridle, one of the speakers at Unbound Book, and Kristine Hanna, director of the Internet Archive are two of the workshop panelists.

‘The Book Tomorrow’ is tapping into a similar set of issues addressed at Unbound Book, but seems more focused on the debate about copyright, rather than formal changes to the book and on education. 

See for more information:

http://focus2011.org/focus/