For Immediate ŒRelease

January 17, 2006

Contact: Judith Platt
Ph: 202-220-4551
Email: jplatt@publishers.org

ALA President to Speak at Publishers’ Meeting

Michael Gorman, President of the American Library Association, is the latest addition to a stellar roster of speakers at the 2006 Annual Meeting of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), which will be held at the Millennium Broadway Hotel in New York on March 14. 

AAP President Pat Schroeder announced that Mr. Gorman, who is Dean of Library Services at the Henry Madden Library, California State University Fresno,  will share the podium with Dana Gioia, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, to discuss increasing reading and literacy among adults. 

Following the release of the NEA report “Reading at Risk” in 2004, the problem of   declining readership, especially literary readership, has received some needed media attention, generating the beginning of a national dialogue.  The AAP 2006 Annnual Meeting program-- Where Have All the Readers Gone? And How Can We Find New Ones?—continues that dialogue from a variety of perspectives, including early childhood,  elementary and secondary public education, higher education,  the political sphere, and lessons to be learned from entertainment media.  In addition to Messrs. Gorman and Gioia, featured speakers include Reach Out and Read founder Dr. Barry Zuckerman, U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings,  New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer,  Princeton University President Shirley M. Tilghman, and Angela Shapiro, President of Fox Productions. 

The Association of American Publishers is the national trade association of the U.S. book publishing industry.  AAP’s members include most of the major commercial book publishers in the United States, as well as smaller and non-profit publishers, university presses, and scholarly societies.  AAP members publish hardcover and paperback books in every field, educational materials for the elementary, secondary, postsecondary,  and professional markets, computer software, and electronic products and services.

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