In the recently concluded Congress of Southeast Asian Librarians (CONSAL XIV) held on 21-23 April 2009 at the Melia Hotel in Hanoi, Vietnam, I had the pleasure of bringing to an audience of library and information professionals in the region a home-grown practice on community/public librarianship that is grounded on the principles of libraries as promoters of literacy and more importantly, libraries as social institutions that are vital to building and promoting sustainable communities.
The case study on the Democratizing Reading Among Mindanaoan (DReAM) Children Project, piloted in Tampakan, South Cotabato, Philippines in 2006, was among the 42 papers selected out of the total 131 abstracts submitted to the CONSAL XIV Organizing Committee, along with five others from fellow Filipino librarians: Vernon Totanes, Elvira Lapuz, Mila Ramos, Beth Peralejo and Nhemi Pasamba.
The presentation zeroed in on the DReAM Children’s journey towards the advocacy of mainstreaming public libraries and how it is helping its pilot community comply with Republic Act 7743 which is a 15-year old mandate whose compliance remain relatively low across the country owing to limitations on resources and local capacities.
The paper not only brought an advocacy to a wider audience, but also surfaced good local practice which leverage on stakeholder involvement and partnership -- community-driven approaches which others countries faced with similar circumstances can possibly take after.
The full paper is available at the CONSAL website.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Thursday, April 16, 2009
A Step to a DReAM of Mainstreaming South Cotabato's Public Libraries
Monday, the 20th of April 2009, I fly to Hanoi, Vietnam. I take with me an advocacy to mainstream public libraries shared by a number of fellow Southern Mindanao librarians. In many ways, I am proud to take part of Mindanao with me, on a journey for this cause. I am aware that the steps I am taking, or I can possibly take are small, but they are headed to a definite and clear direction.
The past two days, in a last minute attempt to arm myself with more inspiration and motivation to help push this advocacy further, I, along with my husband, a community development worker who has become a staunch co-advocate, went public library hopping in the City Library of Koronadal, and the Municipal Library of Tupi, South Cotabato. I shall put on hold what I have seen and reserve my comments on the two libraries I visited pending further interviews with their staff. Meanwhile, I guess I have succeeded at meeting my objectives. And so I fly out of the country more inspired to present a case for a public library in South Cotabato, and more determined to dream bigger for the other public libraries of this province.
The past two days, in a last minute attempt to arm myself with more inspiration and motivation to help push this advocacy further, I, along with my husband, a community development worker who has become a staunch co-advocate, went public library hopping in the City Library of Koronadal, and the Municipal Library of Tupi, South Cotabato. I shall put on hold what I have seen and reserve my comments on the two libraries I visited pending further interviews with their staff. Meanwhile, I guess I have succeeded at meeting my objectives. And so I fly out of the country more inspired to present a case for a public library in South Cotabato, and more determined to dream bigger for the other public libraries of this province.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
NDMU Graduates Second to the Last Batch of Library Science Majors
The Notre Dame of Marbel University (NDMU) in the City of Koronadal, South Cotabato graduated its second to the last batch of Library Science (LS) majors on 22 March 2009.
Next year, it will graduate its last batch, unless the program is swarmed by more takers and management decides to shift gear and keep the program from closing. They say that the closing of the LS program is only temporary but it is a necessary option now because it is costly to run and maintain a program with very few takers. They say there was never an academic year in the past five years at least, that enrollment went past ten students. In essence, it is the numbers that will either overturn or seal the fate of this program.
Numbers do not at all surprise me. I remember there were just two of us in my own batch who were enrolled in the LS program at the University of the Philippines Institute of Library Science (UP ILS). I have witnessed how the then ILS community struggled to hold on, until persistence, patience and sheer faith in the profession paid off. The ILS, now School of Library and Information Studies (SLIS), is gearing up for more programs and a new building. I credit this wonderful achievement to the SLIS community, then and now, for keeping the program off the death zone.
I wonder if the same can be said of NDMU before the last batch exits next year. I'd like to believe so. I know of former NDMU colleagues and students who are disheartened by what has happened. They have a reason to feel that way. NDMU is the first ever institution in the SOCSKSARGEN area which offered Library Science back in the early 90s; and now one of only two institutions offering LS, the other one being the Notre Dame of Dadiangas University in General Santos City which offered LS in the early 2000. Most of the librarians of different institutions in and out of the SOCSKSARGEN area were NDMU graduates. I believe that together, they have a voice, but this voice should be motivated by a common objective to influence policy and convince the NDMU management to change its mind.
I am keeping positive that NDMU will still see more LS graduates in the future. So much can still be done in a year, collectively. Perhaps it can take after what the UP ILS community did to keep LS from being added to the statistics of "dead" programs. And with the same formula of patience, persistence, and sheer faith in the profession, the NDMU LS community can probably still resuscitate the program, perhaps maybe reinvent it like what ILS did to become SLIS.
At any rate, I am glad I was once part of the lives of the batch that just graduated. We will see more of each other in the field. Meanwhile, I hope to see more students choosing to become librarians.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
On Pushing the Cause of Public Libraries
It has been close to three weeks since I last posted a blog. I had been immersed writing an advocacy paper on reader development and about mainstreaming public libraries. I hope it is good enough excuse.
The past days, I interviewed two colleagues working for public libraries here in South Cotabato relative to the paper I am writing. Both expressed rather depressing realities of the diminishing motivation to push the cause of public libraries because efforts seem to go nowhere and the usual constraints due to lack of funds that paralyze their creativity. I perfectly understand where thay come from. It must be very difficult where they are -- boxed in by seemingly hopeless circumstances. It is a bit easier where I am, looking at them from afar, trying to articulate their concerns and trying to lift my fingers to be able to help them in any way I could. Then I realize that there is a difference between being there where these public librarians are and looking, empathizing and articulating their realities from the outside. There definitely is more to the advocacy on mainstreaming public libraries than just writing and delivering papers at conferences.
Then just now, I have spoken with a former colleague from the Notre Dame of Marbel University Mr. Arvin M. Tejada who is much into the same advocacy as I am. Talking to him lifted my spirits, kept me motivated and all the more challenged to push this common advocacy. Never mind if to others these may seem as time-consuming, old-fashioned, or even hopeless pursuits. It's admirable how librarians like Arvin can choose not to be constrained nor limited by circumstances, no matter how hard it is to navigate just to get the cause of public libraries to the mainstream. It is always a choice.
I wish there were more fellow Mindanao librarians with a heart and passion for community development work like those I have spoken and interviewed, so we can pull our resources and capacities together in order to push this advocacy far enough to be felt and understood.
The past days, I interviewed two colleagues working for public libraries here in South Cotabato relative to the paper I am writing. Both expressed rather depressing realities of the diminishing motivation to push the cause of public libraries because efforts seem to go nowhere and the usual constraints due to lack of funds that paralyze their creativity. I perfectly understand where thay come from. It must be very difficult where they are -- boxed in by seemingly hopeless circumstances. It is a bit easier where I am, looking at them from afar, trying to articulate their concerns and trying to lift my fingers to be able to help them in any way I could. Then I realize that there is a difference between being there where these public librarians are and looking, empathizing and articulating their realities from the outside. There definitely is more to the advocacy on mainstreaming public libraries than just writing and delivering papers at conferences.
Then just now, I have spoken with a former colleague from the Notre Dame of Marbel University Mr. Arvin M. Tejada who is much into the same advocacy as I am. Talking to him lifted my spirits, kept me motivated and all the more challenged to push this common advocacy. Never mind if to others these may seem as time-consuming, old-fashioned, or even hopeless pursuits. It's admirable how librarians like Arvin can choose not to be constrained nor limited by circumstances, no matter how hard it is to navigate just to get the cause of public libraries to the mainstream. It is always a choice.
I wish there were more fellow Mindanao librarians with a heart and passion for community development work like those I have spoken and interviewed, so we can pull our resources and capacities together in order to push this advocacy far enough to be felt and understood.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
On Embracing Change and Trusting the Future
Embrace the change. Trust the future.
In a recently-concluded Strategic Planning I attended, we were asked to write down our thoughts after the first day’s session. I had written down three, but the one that caught the facilatator’s attention was that I wrote about embracing change and trusting the future. The following day, she flashed it on screen and invited everyone to adopt it as their mantra.
Now I am starting to ask what exactly prompted me to write it, and if I can consistently live by this mantra myself.
Which brings me to a favorite book I read some thirtreen years back. The book, The Songs of Salanda and Other Stories of Sulu, was written by anthropologist H. Arlo Nimmo. It was an anthology of short stories about his own personal encounters while immersed working with the people of Sulu. Towards the end of the last chapter he wrote that, “change is relentless in its demands, and there are casualties.”
In my whole lifetime, I saw myself navigating through so many life changes, some I managed to survive unscathed, the others I either helplessly resisted or tried hard to control. Some of these changes consumed me; the others made me fly high. Change is demanding, indeed; and trusting a constantly metamorphosing future requires faith greater than one’s own.
When I came home to Mindanao in 1998, I planned of working full-time in a big academic institution. I thought of seeing myself either heading an academic library until retirement, or becoming a full-time faculty of Library Science, or working both as a librarian and a faculty on a part-time basis. I did have a taste of life as an academic, but it was not meant to be for long. Certain circumstances would always get in the way. It took a while before it dawned on me I was probably never meant to work as I planned. I was not going to be a librarian working around a physical space called the library. I embraced this twist in my career plans and went with the flow.
Today, I use the same skills I learned back in college doing other things. I do not manage an academic library and do not organize books. Instead, I make sense of and organize organizational (explicit) content, and devise a system for capturing human interactions and tacit knowledge. It's a pretty interesting job, a huge canvass from which I can still learn many other things. I still am passionate about libraries, but this time, my personal interest is geared towards public libraries. I still long to one day see more public libraries built, and more children reading inside these libraries.
So when asked about my profession, I’d gladly say I am a librarian. But not in the strictest sense. I still teach, although I am not quite a teacher, either. I am a metamorposed librarian. As soon as I embraced change, I have experienced what I did not plan -- i.e., to be in professions not exactly my own but which require the skills I have been taught in library and information science school. I wonder if this would have happened if I resisted change. Looking back now, I am glad I refused to be a casualty of my own limited notion, or of the changing information landscape. I think that as soon as we embrace change and trust the future, we'd be brought to where we can be our “best” and where we can give the most profound meaning to our existence.
Change, I learned, is pointless to resist. I have no option but to live by the mantra. I know that I shared it both as an invitation and an inspiration.
In a recently-concluded Strategic Planning I attended, we were asked to write down our thoughts after the first day’s session. I had written down three, but the one that caught the facilatator’s attention was that I wrote about embracing change and trusting the future. The following day, she flashed it on screen and invited everyone to adopt it as their mantra.
Now I am starting to ask what exactly prompted me to write it, and if I can consistently live by this mantra myself.
Which brings me to a favorite book I read some thirtreen years back. The book, The Songs of Salanda and Other Stories of Sulu, was written by anthropologist H. Arlo Nimmo. It was an anthology of short stories about his own personal encounters while immersed working with the people of Sulu. Towards the end of the last chapter he wrote that, “change is relentless in its demands, and there are casualties.”
In my whole lifetime, I saw myself navigating through so many life changes, some I managed to survive unscathed, the others I either helplessly resisted or tried hard to control. Some of these changes consumed me; the others made me fly high. Change is demanding, indeed; and trusting a constantly metamorphosing future requires faith greater than one’s own.
When I came home to Mindanao in 1998, I planned of working full-time in a big academic institution. I thought of seeing myself either heading an academic library until retirement, or becoming a full-time faculty of Library Science, or working both as a librarian and a faculty on a part-time basis. I did have a taste of life as an academic, but it was not meant to be for long. Certain circumstances would always get in the way. It took a while before it dawned on me I was probably never meant to work as I planned. I was not going to be a librarian working around a physical space called the library. I embraced this twist in my career plans and went with the flow.
Today, I use the same skills I learned back in college doing other things. I do not manage an academic library and do not organize books. Instead, I make sense of and organize organizational (explicit) content, and devise a system for capturing human interactions and tacit knowledge. It's a pretty interesting job, a huge canvass from which I can still learn many other things. I still am passionate about libraries, but this time, my personal interest is geared towards public libraries. I still long to one day see more public libraries built, and more children reading inside these libraries.
So when asked about my profession, I’d gladly say I am a librarian. But not in the strictest sense. I still teach, although I am not quite a teacher, either. I am a metamorposed librarian. As soon as I embraced change, I have experienced what I did not plan -- i.e., to be in professions not exactly my own but which require the skills I have been taught in library and information science school. I wonder if this would have happened if I resisted change. Looking back now, I am glad I refused to be a casualty of my own limited notion, or of the changing information landscape. I think that as soon as we embrace change and trust the future, we'd be brought to where we can be our “best” and where we can give the most profound meaning to our existence.
Change, I learned, is pointless to resist. I have no option but to live by the mantra. I know that I shared it both as an invitation and an inspiration.
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