The Academic Book Fair Liber.ac
The Academic Book Fair Liber.ac is a three-day public event with an accompanying programme. It has introduced a new type of book fair to the Slovenian space, and has also established a new cultural and communication centre. This event connects different agents from the fields of the production and promotion of academic literature, including university publishers, bookstores, and university libraries. It highlights the diversity and quality of Slovenian academic publishing, and presents the most recent scholarly achievements and interdisciplinary developmental trends in the sphere of tertiary education. Additionally, it promotes academic literature among the general public, university students, secondary education students who are deciding on the course of further study, and among those enrolling in university studies in the context of lifelong learning.
In the year when Ljubljana celebrated the 2,000th anniversary of its founding, Liber.ac was a lively gathering of authors, illustrators, translators, musicians, dancers. Books for adults and for children were discussed, stories were told (did you know that the Argonauts had a stopover in Ljubljana?), poets read their poetry, Irish music was heard, and travel memories (and dreams) were shared (how about biking across the Australian outback?). Every Tom, Dick, and Harry was there (and every Titus, Dex and Horatius, too). Pity if you missed it.
The 2015 Liber.ac book fair was put together through the combined forces of the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology and the Department of Musicology. The motto of the fair’s comprehensive and fascinating programme was “Zvok knjige, zven življenja” (“The sound of the book, the sound of life”).
In 2016, meanwhile, Liber.ac events were prepared primarily by the Department of Asian Studies in honour of their 20th anniversary. The highlight was the “Journey to the East,” where visitors could participate in a traditional tea ritual, do traditional Korean hanbok clothing, learn the right way of bowing, and much, much more.
Liber.ac 2017 was carefully planned by the Faculty of Arts’ Department of Slavistics, which arranged for a fine surprise to kick off the fair: a performance by Zoran Predin, from whose lyrics the fair’s motto (“Kdo je tebe, Praslovan…”) was borrowed. Visitors to the fair could partake of language workshops and listen to Slovenian and foreign authors, among them, Goran Vojnović, the winner of this year’s Kresnik Award.
