This blog has a new look. Comments and suggestions are welcome. But if you're also a blogger (using Blogger.com) and are wondering how I did certain things, take a look at the following:
I always thought 3-column layouts were not possible on Blogger. This blog offers clear instructions for doing so for just about all the free themes offered on Blogger.
Blogger.com allows the listing of labels, but not in a way that makes it clear which labels are used more often. But now I have a tag cloud in my sidebar!
This Firefox Add-on has made one-click copying of link texts and URLs possible (as opposed to copying the text first, pasting it, then doing the same for the URL, which can get tedious if you link to as many sites as I do).
I finally got around to fulfilling the biggest part of the plans I detailed in "Filipino Librarian Wins 165K on 'Kapamilya Deal or No Deal'." The photo above shows the first patient who received her chemotherapy treatment within minutes of delivery of the three recliners and thirty IV stands that were on the wish list of the doctors at the oncology ward of Veterans Memorial Medical Center. It seemed appropriate that the patient was someone who saw me play =) Next step: distribute the smaller amounts...
This isn't going to matter to many of this blog's readers, but I just thought I'd note that this blog's PageRank went up from 5 to 6 while I wasn't looking. All this means, of course, is that Google thinks this blog is more credible—according to its algorithm—than others with lower PageRanks, and not that it has more readers. It's also worth noting that though this blog began only in February 2005, its PageRank was already at 5 within six months (23 August 2005, to be exact).
Just to put all this in perspective, Inquirer.net and librarian.net—two of the sites visited most by Filipinos and librarians, respectively—each has a PageRank of 7, and most blogs will be lucky to have a PageRank of 5 after several years. If you'd like to know more about PageRank, see "How Google's PageRank Works."
There's no need to be alarmed. The title of this post refers not to the demise of Philippine Studies (PS), but to the fact that more than five decades of its issues—from the first one published in 1953 to the last issue in 2006 not covered by the embargo mentioned in "FO: Philippine Studies"—are now available online.
In addition, subscribers inside and outside the Philippines now have other options for renewing subscriptions. Full-text searching is not possible, but an index for the 1993-2007 issues (pdf) may be downloaded. Here's hoping the indexes for the older issues will also be made available.
That's the title of the forum for which I'll be one of the panelists at the National Conference on Library and Information Science Education at the Ortigas Foundation Library on 13 and 14 April 2009. The event is sponsored by the Philippine Association of Teachers of Library and Information Science (PATLS), but the intended audience is not limited to teachers. Students and graduates of library schools, as well as librarians and library support staff, are encouraged to participate. The conference fee (P2,500) might be a bit steep for students, but maybe the powers that be can still be persuaded to charge a lower fee for students =)
Anyway, I hope some of the readers of this blog will be there, so we can take a group photo. It's the last time I'll be a speaker at a conference in the Philippines this year...
The title of this presentation is “The Road Less Taken: The Future of LIS Graduates.” The title was just given to me, and since I thought it was intriguing, I didn’t change it at all. I think the title begs reflection. Why was it necessary, for instance, to mention “The Road Less Taken,” when “The Future of LIS Graduates” probably would have been sufficient to guarantee the attendance of prospective or current LIS students, and recent graduates wondering about their job prospects? Why was it necessary to juxtapose the word “less” with “future”?
It almost seems as if there is some doubt regarding the future of LIS graduates. Maybe the organizers can tell me later the real reason they chose the title, but it got me thinking that perhaps it’s a way of signaling that the future of LIS graduates needs to be examined within the context of decisions we have made and continue to make. And then there are the questions. Why is a career in LIS considered the road less taken? What will the future be like for LIS graduates?
I will not pretend that I have the answer for the second question. I am not, after all, Nostradamus or Madame Auring or even a career consultant. What I will try to do in the next thirty minutes or so is talk about the realities related to librarianship in the Philippines and what we can do to guarantee the growth of our profession and ensure that LIS graduates have a future.
Before I try to answer any of the questions, it might be good to take a brief look at Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken.” It is a popular poem that has been interpreted in many ways. But to me, it is basically about what you see in the photo. The poem is about the decisions we make at certain points in our lives. Here are the poem’s last three lines:
It has been said that there are three kinds of people: those who make things happen, those who just watch things happen, and those who wonder “What happened?” In the context of the poem, the first group is composed of people who actively decide which road to take, those in the second group choose to follow whoever is in front of them, and the third group’s members are probably drunk and don’t even know where they are. Tanong para sa lahat, isipin niyo ang isang importanteng pagkakataon sa inyong buhay, kayo ba talaga ang nag-desisyon, sinunod niyo lang ba ang sabi ng ibang tao o nagising na lang kayo isang araw at nalamang may nag-desisyon na pala para sa inyo? Nangyari na sa akin ang lahat ng ito.
Ask me about the details later if you want, but the results were that my parents enrolled me without my knowledge at the Ateneo High School, instead of Philippine Science High School; my teachers and classmates convinced me that Management Engineering was a good course; and finally, instead of pursuing an MBA, I decided to get a masters in library and information science. I have no regrets, but it is the last decision that I made by myself that was most meaningful and has, in fact, made all the difference.
There is a book called The Road Less Travelled by M. Scott Peck. We don’t really have time to discuss it, but one of its chapters is entitled “Love Defined.” This is going to be totally out of context, but I’d like to relate the notion of love and Robert Frost’s poem with a Filipino song that I think captures why decisions and love should not be mutually exclusive. The song is called “Sangandaan,” which is an apt Tagalog description for the photo on the screen. Here’s the song:
I suppose you could say it’s a love song, but if you consider that it is from the 1980s movie Sister Stella L, it becomes clear that the song is more than just about romantic love, and applies to love of God and country as well. I’d like to think that the decision to become—and remain—a librarian involves love. Of books, libraries, librarians. Because if you want to become a librarian for purely financial reasons, you’re probably better off going somewhere else.
Masyado na bang mahaba ang pasakalye? Marahil may nagtatanong na sa inyo: kung tula ang “The Road Not Taken” at aklat ang The Road Less Travelled, ano naman ang “The Road Less Taken”?
Because the phrase “I took the one less travelled by” in the poem is so popular, many mistakenly assume that the poem’s title is “The Road Less Travelled,” or even “The Road Less Taken.” But in the case of this presentation, I don’t think any mistake has been made. After all, the phrase “the road not taken” refers to the other road or what could have been, and “the road less travelled” implies the ability to go back and forth from a destination. “The road less taken,” meanwhile, implies a certain finality, that there is no turning back. That, I think, is the case for most of us who are here today. We can always decide to go back to school or change careers, but the time we have spent on the road less taken cannot be recovered. As another song reminds us, “there’s no rewinding, no replay.”
The same is not true for the high school students among us. The best advice I can give you is to think about what you like doing and imagine yourself doing it for the rest of your life. The reason I became a librarian was that I couldn’t see myself working in a bank until I retired, but I could imagine doing so in a library.
The clip I’m about to show you is the first part of a 10-minute film produced in the 1940s [but you can watch the whole clip below]. We’ll use it as a starting point to think about how the profession has changed since then and how the characteristics expected of those interested in becoming librarians have evolved as well.
[And then I started talking about the future of the profession in the United States and in the Philippines. The following are the articles I referred to:
This was followed by a discussion of the licensure exam using the slide below as a starting point.]
But perhaps the most important factor that supposedly threatens the future of libraries is the rise in the use of the computer and the Internet. Predictions have been made that Google and the digitization of books will make libraries irrelevant. I don’t think this will happen because someone will still have to mediate between the hard-core techies and the computer illiterates, but we do have to change with the times. We’ll have to keep up with the technology, so that when e-books become more common than books in libraries, we can assist our customers with their needs. We have to be familiar not just with cataloging, but tagging; not just literacy, but information literacy. The younger generation actually has an advantage over us because they have grown up with the technology and have no problems using it.
What will the future be like for LIS graduates? The best answer I can give is this: It depends. There will be factors over which we will have no control, like the speed with which new technology is developed and adopted; but there are also other factors over which we will have absolute control. The most important of these factors, in my opinion, is our own reaction to the changes that are occurring. Will we reject all the new forms of media and technology as being irrelevant to libraries? Or will we experiment with them and adopt those that are useful for us or for our customers?
The need to adopt the latest technology, however, is not as urgent in the Philippines as it is in the West. The next few minutes will be devoted to the realities that Filipino librarians face and what we can do to address these challenges. This applies not only to those who are already librarians, but to the future librarians as well.
1. Decide that you want to be an agent of change.
2. Think of yourself as a missionary, not a mechanic.
3. Write your mission statement, and make it happen.
4. Self-promotion is a necessary evil.
5. Bring the library to your customers.
6. Be proactive.
And then there’s what other people think of us. Think about what would have happened to the image of librarians if one of the four leads in "Sex and the City" had been a librarian. Or what if the women in "Desperate Housewives" were having affairs not with plumbers and gardeners, but librarians?
We are licensed librarians, but many times jokes are made at our expense and many of us just smile and keep quiet. Others take offense and make sure that the offending party regrets not knowing that there is more to being a librarian than cataloging books. But there has to be a way of educating people about our profession without scaring them away. Just as some librarians are able to maintain silence in their libraries without traumatizing their users.
Last year, one of the speakers at a conference I attended presented a proposal for a mini public relations campaign to entice more students to become librarians, and revive the public’s interest in going to libraries in the Philippines. Aside from trying to get feature articles written about famous and unconventional librarians and promoting libraries as an alternative to malls, where singles can find love and families can have fun together, she also suggested that a commercial movie starring a popular actress in the role of a librarian be produced.
A few articles about libraries and librarians are published in newspapers and magazines every now and then, and I try to link to as many of them as I can find on my blog, but there are not nearly enough of them to create the desired effect. Besides, print isn’t really the medium that commands the attention of most Filipinos. The movie would probably be more effective, but there are too many factors involved, with no guarantee of success.
I think the most effective venue for promoting our profession is TV. It would be good if librarians were invited as resource persons on talk shows, except this has not quite happened often enough.
I think the best way for librarians to reach as many Filipinos as possible at one time—and send the message that librarians come in all shapes, sizes, ages and genders—is through the shows that encourage the participation of ordinary Filipinos. These would be the game shows and even reality shows.
Again, please don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that appearances on TV will ensure a brighter future for our LIS graduates. But I’d like to think that having Kris Aquino ask me where I work as a librarian opened the minds of a few million Filipinos to the possibility that not all librarians are female, and maybe it even shattered a few other stereotypes they may have had. Imagine what kind of impact the presence of a librarian on "Pinoy Big Brother" or "Survivor" would have on the image of Filipino librarians. But no, please don’t look at me, I have a dissertation to finish.
We need to start looking at ourselves as leaders, instead of just managers, catalogers, or reference librarians. And then we have to start thinking and acting like leaders. Not in the sense that actors and actresses play roles on stage or screen, but in the proactive sense. Do we really need to wait to be told that the future has arrived? Is it society's fault that negative librarian stereotypes abound or is it ours? Should we just accept that there's no money for the changes that need to be made? Is there really nothing else that can be done?
Many librarians complain that their communities think they do not do anything but sit at their desks and stamp books. But what, I usually ask, are they doing to dispel this notion? No one is obliged to recognize the importance of the library—librarians must be the ones to convince others of its importance. We need to be more proactive about communicating and interacting with our own communities, and networking—and working—with other literacy and library advocates. And whether or not you look like a stereotypical librarian or not is irrelevant.
Ask yourself: Why is it that I do what I do? Am I deciding for myself or am I just following what others tell me to do? Is the road I have chosen the one I really wanted to take? Each of us will have our own answers to these questions. It is my hope that our answers will inspire all of us to make appropriate contributions to the future of our libraries and our profession so that LIS graduates will have a future.
