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LLE 2007: Results

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Today is Bonifacio Day, and a day after a laughable attempt at people power that did not draw the masses to revolt. Maybe because, unlike Bonifacio, the instigators were too elitist to leave their hotel.

UPDATED 1 DECEMBER 2007 to include Top 11.

Congratulations to the new librarians!

The passing rate for the Librarians' Licensure Examination went down from 37 percent last year to 32 percent (278 out of 868). The website of the Professional Regulation Commission is, as usual, not much help. It looks like it only gets updated when nurses are involved.

Six applications for registration without examination were also granted, even though the official deadline for such registrations seems to have long passed. According to "The Professional Librarian: Who and How," "Since the Act was approved on February 19, 2004, practicing librarians considered exempt by the provisions of sec.19 may apply until February of 2007." Then again, maybe the six applied on time, but were not among those granted registration without examination last September.

Below is the list of successful examinees and applicants as published in the Philippine Star. The Top 11 is from the Manila Bulletin. If you're one of the new librarians looking for a job, you may want to check out Job Openings and Career Development.


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Posted by vonjobi at 11/30/2007 08:32:00 AM

Disconnects in Education: Women and Boys

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The following are the 3 parts of a series, plus a related article, by Juan Miguel Luz (Philippine Daily Inquirer, 26-28 November 2007):

System-wide solutions needed, not band-aids
Teachers subsidizing pupils’ needs
Larger number of boys than girls drop out by Grade 5
Pockets of hope for Muslim schoolchildren
I've linked in the past to quite a few articles by and about Luz, a former DepEd undersecretary, because I support his cause and the articles make sense. These new articles are no exception. I do have a problem, however, with the following:
When boys and girls grow up, they will tend toward marriage. Given today’s economy and lifestyle, chances are both husband and wife will have to work. Given the likelihood that the wife has a better or more complete education, chances are she will have a more steady and better paying job.

Our society, however, is male-oriented. We recognize the husband as the head of household even if the wife may be the real breadwinner. How will these two realities square? I fear that in many cases, there will be underlying tensions that will result in increasing problems of domestic violence and spousal abuse.

Thus, it is important to keep boys in school to give them a chance at finishing, moving on to college, and/or getting jobs that provide adequate pay and fulfillment.
I suspect feminists will have something to say about the author's gender bias, but the way I see it, if boys don't want to go to school, that's their problem. I am a man who has worked in fields dominated by women (i.e., banking, teaching, librarianship), and I say that women deserve whatever they've achieved because they worked for it. I can still remember how awed I was at some of my colleagues who juggled so many tasks at work and at home, and still managed to stay beautiful. And all their husbands did was worry about going to work.

Encouraging girls to go to school in the past may have been justified, but only because girls were previously discouraged from going to school. Well, it's not the same situation with the boys today. If the boys decide not to go to school and become wife-beaters, my guess is that the women will, by then, be more than educated enough to deal with boys.

Posted by vonjobi at 11/28/2007 09:19:00 PM

Libworld: Library and
Librarian Blogs of the World

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Libworld
It used to be that I'd find out about library and librarian blogs from other countries by chance. And most of them were usually from North America. Well, finding other blograrians around the world just became easier.

Libworld is "a series of postings in which guest authors introduce the library and library related blogs of their particular country." Just about every continent is now represented, except for Africa and Antarctica. Asia, it turns out, has blograrians in Iran, and not just Singapore and the Philippines.

The map above shows some interesting omissions—where are the United States and India?—but since the people behind Libworld just started their project last April 2007, I'm sure that they've already begun work on filling the gaps.

Posted by vonjobi at 11/27/2007 07:20:00 PM

English is the De Facto National Language

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Today is the first day of National Book Week. It is also the first day of the Librarians' Licensure Examination.
From "English and the nation’s memory" by Jonathan Best (Philippine Daily Inquirer, 26 November 2007):
Sitting at my desk at the Ortigas Foundation Library in Pasig, surrounded by 16,000 books and periodicals relating to Philippine history, culture and the arts, I realize over 90 percent are in English, with maybe another 500 vintage titles in Spanish and very few in Filipino. This breakdown is probably not unlike many other major reference libraries in Manila.
What Best fails to mention is that the Ortigas Foundation Library (OFL), which has a new website, is primarily a Filipiniana library. This means that, compared to other reference libraries, the percentage of books written in Philippine languages in the OFL collection is probably higher. And that other libraries very likely have even smaller percentages of books written in languages indigenous to the Philippines.

So? Put this reality together with the fact that English is the language most often used in official functions by members of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government, and what we have is a de facto national language. Never mind that we're supposed to have a Buwan ng Wika that celebrates our many languages, but very few of which can be understood by Filipinos across the nation. Those who subscribe to conspiracy theories might even think that those pushing for the adoption of Filipino as the medium of instruction just want to make it even more difficult for the poor to understand what's going on in our government right now, and even what happened in the past.

Best is right. We need English.

Posted by vonjobi at 11/26/2007 06:19:00 PM

Do Pinoys Read at All?

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From "Do Pinoys read at all?" by Queena Lee-Chua (Philippine Daily Inquirer, 25 November 2007):

Early this year, the NBDB commissioned the Social Weather Stations to do a second Readership Survey (the first was done in 2003)... First, the bad news. Generally, the survey shows that reading has slightly declined in our nation...

Perhaps more readers prefer to read media other than print, such as the Net. Perhaps others turn to other types of entertainment, such as TV. Perhaps the cost of books has become prohibitive for most of us.

The survey does not analyze the reasons why, but the research team offers some recommendations. "The challenge is for booksellers and publishers, printers and paper and ink manufacturers, to make more books affordable. The government can facilitate this, as well as the financing of technology upgrades to make operations more efficient and economical."

"Authors are also challenged to write more books, not just to entertain, but also to inform, to teach the readers skills or to convey to them practical knowledge. Community libraries [should encourage] adults and out-of-school youth to like to read books; and educators, to teach students to read longer materials, such as books."
I will be there when the 2007 Readership Survey results are presented to the public on November 28. Aside from the fact that I'd like to know more about the results, I think I'd like to ask why it is that the recommendations name practically all the people in the life cycle of the book (e.g., authors, publishers, educators), but mentions only the role of libraries and not librarians.

Does this imply that libraries can encourage reading even without the involvement of librarians? Maybe it was a Freudian slip. Maybe there are, in fact, just too many invisible librarians =)

Posted by vonjobi at 11/25/2007 09:05:00 PM

This Blog's Reading Level: High School

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cash advance

What does this mean? It means that a high school student can understand my blog... and that I have the vocabulary of a high school student =)


Via Stephen's Lighthouse

Posted by vonjobi at 11/24/2007 07:30:00 PM

Did Erap Deserve His Pardon?

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I am not against the granting of a pardon to persons who deserve it. However, people who have refused to accept their guilt and have shown no contrition for the crime they committed do not deserve pardon (source).
Nope, Senator Noynoy Aquino was not referring to former President Joseph "Erap" Estrada, but to Pablo Martinez, one of those convicted for the assassination of Ninoy Aquino, the senator's father.

Maybe Martinez truly does not deserve to be pardoned, but I wonder if the conditions Noynoy thinks of as making a person worthy of being pardoned are applicable to the man with whom he has jumped into bed. After all, here's what Erap's wife (or one of them, anyway) says: "He never stole from the country, we would fight for it if we have to" (source).

After the "Cory and Loi" show, I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

Like mother, like son.

Posted by vonjobi at 11/23/2007 08:15:00 PM

FO: TV Ads (1970s-Present)

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I've written about TV ads before, but since YouTube wasn't as big then as it is now, and the 20th Philippine Advertising Congress is currently underway, I thought I'd share the "Karen" ad from McDonald's (above) and some links to a few TV ads—courtesy of ADman1909—as a way to get you to take a look at some of the 204 ads he's uploaded so far. You may view all of the TV ads uploaded by ADman1909, who also takes requests, by clicking on the following:

All Videos | Most Viewed | Most Discussed
By the way, some of the ads have poor video or poor audio or both. But if you look at "Related Videos" in the sidebar, you may just find a better version uploaded by someone else.
680 Department Store (Bert Marcelo)
Palmolive: "I Can Feel It" (Alice Dixson)
San Miguel Beer: Sabado Nights (Ina Raymundo)
Purefoods Tender Juicy Hotdog: Goodbye, Carlo
Coke: The Coke Beat

Posted by vonjobi at 11/22/2007 06:25:00 PM

FO: Reports of the Governors General (1900-1915)

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"Old but timely reports" by Ambeth Ocampo (Philippine Daily Inquirer, 20 October 2007) reminds me that I have not even begun to fulfill my promise to write about the sites to which I linked in "Filipiniana Online: Links Shared at Rizal Library International Conference."

Let me start with the The United States and its Territories: 1870-1925: The Age of Imperialism (USIT), which I have previously dubbed "the best and largest online collection of Filipiniana materials available for free." The name of the site suggests a scope both wider and narrower than what it contains, and is perhaps the reason it is not better known. While some content is related to Cuba and Puerto Rico, the majority of the texts are devoted to the Philippines. And though most of the materials were published between 1870 and 1925, there are books and journals in the collection that appeared from 1926 onward. The site has some usability issues, but hey, if you need something and the library's closed or too far away, USIT is it =)

Read More...
Posted by vonjobi at 11/21/2007 05:24:00 PM

National Book Week 2007

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This year, National Book Week will be celebrated from November 26-30. The theme is "Family Literacy: Reading Begins with Us." Below are the activities scheduled for the week, followed by the programs for the Opening Ceremonies (November 26) and the Fellowship Luncheon (November 30).

Thanks to Susan Pador for the information.


ACTIVITIES

November 26
7:00 a.m.
Opening Ceremonies / Fun Walk / Book Character Parade
Venue: The National Library

1:00 p.m.
PATLS: LIS Wizard
Venue: Bulwagang E. de los Santos
The National Library
November 27
8:00–12:00
PAARL: Forum
Theme: Strengthening Interpersonal Skills & Service Attitudes Competencies for Library Staff
Venue: San Beda College

8:00–5:00
CLAPI Outreach Program: Storytelling / Book Giving / Puppet Show
Venue: Payatas, Quezon City
November 28–29
PPLLI: Seminar-Workshop
Theme: Public Librarians: Their Accountability in a Changing Library Environment
Venue: Bulwagang E. de los Santos
The National Library
November 30
10:00 a.m.
Fellowship Luncheon
Venue: Kamay Kainan, Trinoma, Quezon City


OPENING PROGRAMME
Venue: The National Library
November 26, 2007

Part I

7:00 A.M.
NBW FUN WALK AND BOOK CHARACTER PARADE
Assembly: The National Library Grounds

10:00 A.M.
Holy Mass
FR. PAUL MA. M. DE VERA, O.S.B.
Celebrant

Part II

11:00 A.M. OPENING PROGRAM
Venue: Bulwagang Epifanio de los Santos
National Anthem
The National Library Choir

Words of Welcome
MRS. PRUDENCIANA C. CRUZ
Director, The National Library

Opening Remarks
MRS. SUSIMA L. GONZALES
President, PLAI

Introduction of the Guest Speaker
MRS. REBECCA M. JOCSON
Chief Librarian, PLM

Keynote Address
ATTY. ADEL A. TAMANO
President, Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila

Intermission
The National Library Choir

Announcement of Contest Winners
MRS. FE E. ABELARDO
Chair, Special Projects Committee

Awarding of Winners
ATTY. ADEL A. TAMANO
MRS. PRUDENCIANA C. CRUZ
MRS. SUSIMA L. GONZALES

Closing Remarks
MISS BELEN M. VIBAR
Chair, 2007 Overall Co-Chair


MRS. SALVACION M. ARLANTE
Trustee, PLAI
Master of Ceremonies


FELLOWSHIP LUNCHEON
Venue: Kamay Kainan, Trinoma, Quezon City
November 26, 2007

9:30 a.m. REGISTRATION
10:30 a.m. PROGRAMME
Invocation & Blessing of the Food
FR. ANGEL APARICIO, O.P.
Prefect of Libraries, UST

National Anthem
MRS. FE E. ABELARDO
Chair, Special Projects Committee

Words of Welcome
MRS. SUSIMA L. GONZALES
President, PLAI

Introduction of the Guest Speaker
MRS. TERESITA C. MORAN
Chief Librarian, APS

Inspirational Message
PROF. CORAZON M. NERA
Chair, Board for Librarians

Intermission
MR. GIGI RENEGADO
Rizal Library, ADMU

Presentation of Awards
PROF. THELMA KIM
Chair, PLAI Awards Committee
MRS. MILAGROS S. ONG
Chair, NBW Awards Committee

Induction of PLAI NCR Librarians Council
PROF. CORAZON M. NERA
Inducting Officer

Closing Remarks
MISS BELEN M. VIBAR
Chair, 2007 Overall Co-Chair


MRS. REBECCA M. JOCSON
Chief Librarian, PLM
Master of Ceremonies

Posted by vonjobi at 11/19/2007 05:00:00 PM

Money is Not the Solution

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Earlier today, I was looking for a friend at my alma mater when I suddenly found my underdressed self at a formal, invitation-only event honoring some recipients of the Metrobank Foundation's annual Search for Outstanding Teachers. When I learned that I personally knew the two main honorees—Ambeth Ocampo and Benilda Santos—I thought, what the heck, maybe they'll overlook my shirt-jeans-and-sneakers getup and appreciate my presence at this special event. So I went in and marveled once more at just how lucky I've been to have been taught by so many outstanding teachers.

But the most striking thing that I brought home with me was the reference made by the university president to a recent article about a McKinsey study that shows it is not money that leads to better schools. I, of course, made a mental note to look for the article. The following quotes are from "How to be top" (Economist, 13 October 2007):

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Posted by vonjobi at 11/12/2007 09:49:00 PM

Free Posters: Love Your Library

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Iza Calzado, Love Your Library, National Book Development Board
Thanks to the National Book Development Board (NBDB), librarians may now ask for free copies of the poster shown above by phone (9209853) or email (oed-at-nbdb-dot-gov-dot-ph). Librarians may want to have the poster on hand for National Book Week (November 26-30: Family Literacy: Reading Begins with Us).

The poster was produced as part of NBDB's Get Caught Reading campaign, in cooperation with the Filipinas Heritage Library. The model is Iza Calzado.

Posted by vonjobi at 11/08/2007 08:15:00 PM

Librarian Promotes Reading

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From "Storytellers reach, touch hearts of kids" by Ma. Cecilia Rodriguez (Philippine Daily Inquirer, 4 November 2007):

"We are still trying to solicit more (reading materials)," librarian Arlene de Guma said.

To inspire the children to read and understand what they read, they allow even nonreaders to take home the materials for three days so that the parents can read along with them, De Guma said.

"We also encourage the parents to volunteer as storytellers," she said.
The article still sounds like a press release, but at least it's clear that the library has a librarian. To see why this is important to me, see "Librarian-less Libraries are Just Buildings" and an old post that reminds me of the many promises I haven't kept: "Invisible Libraries."

Posted by vonjobi at 11/04/2007 03:16:00 PM
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