Comments on: We, the People: As Readers

By: pilipino

pilipino — Wed, 20 May 2009 18:38:42 +0000

Manolo, I was thinking of a place close to our hearts. We have the Museo but not one pic of provincial or town library is posted in Kid’s blog. Maybe Ed or Bella may know the reasons.

By: GabbyD

GabbyD — Mon, 18 May 2009 05:26:18 +0000

@mlq3 on Wed, 13th May 2009 11:36 am

i didnt think pinoys read much at all. anything over 70% for books would’ve surprised me…

By: mlq3

mlq3 — Thu, 14 May 2009 06:11:18 +0000

upn, if only such grants were being made, with or without caveats.

By: ramrod

ramrod — Thu, 14 May 2009 02:07:31 +0000

I want more Penguin Popular Classic on our Bookstore. These books are great and they’re green.
————————————————————-

Penguin is using bookpaper produced from FSC/PEFC certified pulp (Forest Stewardship Certificates) meaning sustainable forestry/logging practices. Acid free, TCL (totally chlorine free), high opacity, etc. Even the mills priducing these are very strict on emisssions and carbon footprint issues, heat generated is even recycled to power mill itself and the surrounding community, etc., these guys are serious. On the other hand, we have lower taxed paper coming from China, Thailand, and Indonesia using paper made from wood sourced in the rainforest, this along with the lack of environmental protection measures makes them cheaper and of course we have the local, recycled paper alternative, with generous amounts of chlorine for OBA (optical brightening agent).

By: BrianB

BrianB — Wed, 13 May 2009 20:56:30 +0000

I want more Penguin Popular Classic on our Bookstore. These books are great and they’re green.

By: BrianB

BrianB — Wed, 13 May 2009 20:22:05 +0000

Also, coffee shops and fastfood chains play loud music to get read of readers, I think. I remember it was different when I was still in college.

Hidalgo’s little study forgets the fact that so few good books by local authors are getting published, so how can he make a comparison? The less books you publish the less chance you have of hitting a gold publishing gold mine. This is common sense. Out of the hundreds of thousands of books published in England and the US, we only get the bestselling and most acclaimed ones, and he wonders why we buy them.

By: BrianB

BrianB — Wed, 13 May 2009 20:05:36 +0000

Dusk, reading from a monitor is better if proper reading light isn’t ubiquitous. Our sunlight hurts the eyes and should be distinguished from sunlight in temperate regions.

By: UP n grad

UP n grad — Wed, 13 May 2009 18:16:16 +0000

In retrospect, one has to pick the time to do battle over issues.

And for Pinas, for now — it is preferable to have more libraries with a credible inventory of books and infrastructure to access databases and other material available via Internet than to have no libraries at all. If the Vatican or a Saudi prince were to donate three or four library branches with caveat to ban Karl Marx, “The Da Vinci Code”, “How to Drive Your Woman Wild in Bed” or similarly-titled paperbacks, I see wisdom in accepting the gifts (as long as the restrictions do not extend beyond the libraries donated).

By: mlq3

mlq3 — Wed, 13 May 2009 17:00:26 +0000

I think you can find the information you need from the website of the Department of Budget and Management, which would have items for the National Library (System) perhaps sub itemized for the regional libraries.

http://www.dbm.gov.ph/index.php?id=989&pid=8&xid=28

National Archives: 58,779,000 (Personal Services P32,605,000 Maintenance P 25,598,000 Capital Outlays P 576,000)
National Library: 106,086,000 (Personal Services 34,196,000 Maintenance P 47,915,000 Capital Outlays P 23,975,000)
National Historical Institute: 186,074,000 (Personal Services 30,023,000 Maintenance P 61,165,000 Capital Outlays P 94,886,000)
National Statistics Office: 1,396,737,000 (Personal Services P 587,124,000 Maintenance P 806,893,000 Capital Outlays P 2,720,000 )
National Book Development Board 32,571,000 (Personal Services 10,022,000 Maintenance P 21,549,000 Capital Outlays P 1,000,000)

By: mlq3

mlq3 — Wed, 13 May 2009 16:44:04 +0000

UPn, perhaps you shudder, but those proposals were made by me bearing in mind a couple of things. First, most students will troll the net for information rather than burrow through libraries that are underfunded, understocked, and in some cases, actually hostile to students. I’m all for reading widely and without limits, but let me clarify that on the undergraduate level, particularly in freshman and sophomore years, and in high school, teachers are deluged with ludicrous “information” picked willy-nilly from websites. So it would certainly be helpful to students if you pointed them to collections of information that have been vetted, let’s say basic dates, even names of people, and so forth. Neither am I advocating ceasing to collect new books, but that publication habits are changing and that eventually, new technologies will lead to either so many books, impossible to accumulate, physically, or new scholarship being more readily accessible online, and that includes books; and that existing libraries with limited means must make the tough decision to focus on conserving what they have, and limiting the scope of their expansion -ideally cooperation would lead to coalitions of libraries that compensate for each other’s weaknesses. This is actually a long-established program in the US, where you can access various libraries’ lists and borrow books, sent from library to library. As far as I know, we have no similar program here. Also, we have to deal with problems of storage that aren’t exactly faced by libraries in the West, such as the damp and mold and pests; in which case digitalization is a pressing need, as are the advantages this would confer since much of our deposits of books are in the NCR and this leaves the provinces isolated when we should be building up competitive centers of learning not just in Iloilo or Cebu or Davao but accessible everywhere. As it is, maintaining existing collections, getting two or three copies of specific titles that must then be shared by hundreds if not thousands of students, keeps libraries at a hand to mouth level of existence; and at the same time due to many other factors, students shy away from library research which leaves their existing collections underutilized; so creative ways have to be found, taking into account habits that are already entrenched. But this is a good reminder for me to put down my thoughts in a more cohesive essay.