Five Years of Filipino Librarian

From "Mabuhay!," 18 February 2005:

This blog is for all Filipino librarians--whether working in the Philippines or elsewhere.

I am not really a blogger but I thought of setting up this blog as a way of establishing a presence for Filipino librarians on the Internet.

This blog will not be about me. Initially, I see it as a means to share information that I think will benefit Filipino librarians. And once I gain enough blogging experience, maybe we (yes, you and I) can think of other things that we can do with this blog.

Finally, just to make things clear, I do not claim to be the Filipino Librarian.

That was my first post as a blogger. I have written about this post many times (see Six Months, One Year, Two Years, Three Years, and Four Years), so take a look at those posts if you'd like to read about my thoughts on what this blog has accomplished since that first post. For this anniversary, I'd like to reflect on how my profession has changed in the last five years in the context of my own posts. Thus, I have selected a few posts—and more than just a few series of posts—that reveal my own interests and even biases:

"Librarians as Leaders" was one of my very first serious posts on the state of libraries in the Philippines—and it wasn't even written specifically for this blog! Since then, I've written so much more about the topic that it now has its own label: "Leadership."

"Sex in the Library" grew out of a discussion I had with another librarian on how and why it's important to market libraries, and not just wait for people to accidentally wander into the library. And no, it's not about sex, but the post kept getting so many hits, I eventually blogged about other sex-related stuff, too, and labeled them—what else?—"Sex" =)

"Licensed Librarians" was the fourth post on this blog partly because I wanted to emphasize that Filipino librarians are also required to pass board exams. Since then I've shared tips about passing the board exam, as well as annual results, but I'd like to think that people have been paying attention to my posts about who can take the exam (1 2 3 4 5), trends in the passing rate and, most recently, "The Best and the Worst LIS Schools." Label: "Licensed Librarians."

I'd also like to think that my tribute to the "Outstanding Librarians of the Year" has helped the profession. But I still wonder why the identities of these awardees were not known to more people before I blogged about them. To see who they are, check out "Librarians: Awardees."

And then there's the label "Talumpati," which is where you can find the most viewed and commented posts on this blog. Like some of my other posts, I started reproducing talumpati (speeches) because I noticed that one post that had the word "talumpati" kept getting a lot of hits. The same is true of the label "Buwan ng Wika" (Language Month). Sometimes I wonder if I've helped more students with their homework than the librarians who were my initial target readers.

"Filipiniana Online," my seventh post ever, was no accident. I can only hope that I've helped more than just students or librarians find these posts about websites that are not always easy to find. Label: "Filipiniana Online."

After five years of blogging about my profession, I am not entirely sure that there is really much that has changed. It seems to me that there is more that can be done in terms of leadership training, marketing libraries and promoting the profession. But frankly, if it's not obvious yet from the way my posts on this blog have dwindled over the past years, I'm getting a little tired of pushing things that I'm not really sure anyone else cares about. So thanks for visiting on my blog's fifth anniversary—and reading all the way to the end—but to be perfectly honest, I don't know if there's going to be a sixth anniversary. Ciao!