Public Lectures by Three Filipino PhD Students

Just in case you're a regular reader of this blog and didn't know it, this blogger is, in fact, in the Philippines at this time. (Alternatively, if the opposite is true and you thought I've always been in the Philippines, you should know that I've been based in Toronto for most of the past two years.)

Anyway, consider this post an invitation to attend the lectures to be delivered by three PhD students who just happened to be in town at the same time. And just in case you're wondering about the photos above, those are our current profile pictures on Facebook, where a page has been set up so that people who have Facebook accounts can RSVP. You may also read the official announcement below.

The
School of Library and Information Studies
UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES DILIMAN


invites everyone to the lectures


VISUALIZING LEPROSY
ARCHIVES, LEPROSY AND COLLECTIVE MEMORY
by
Ricardo Punzalan
Ph.D. Student, University of Michigan School of Information
Assistant Professor, University of the Philippines


WHAT DOES IT MEME?
SPAM, ONLINE QUIZZES AND THE LAST SONG SYNDROME
COGNITIVE POETICS AND USELESS INFORMATION
by
Paolo Manalo
Ph.D. Student, University of St Andrews School of English
Assistant Professor, University of the Philippines


WHAT WAS THE FIRST BOOK PRINTED IN THE PHILIPPINES?
by
Vernon Totanes
Ph.D. Student, University of Toronto Faculty of Information Studies


on


14 August 2008 (Thursday)
9:00 a.m.
at the
SLIS Rooms 3 & 4
3rd Floor, Gonzalez Hall
(UP Main Library)

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Ricky Punzalan — Filipino Archivist

Click on the image above to read the article.

The latest issue of SI@umich (pdf), the University of Michigan's newsletter for alumni of its School of Information, features Ricardo L. Punzalan, a Filipino archivist currently studying for his PhD.

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FO: Philippine Studies

Two weeks after I wrote "FO: Open Access Journals," Philippine Studies (PS) launched its own website. There is, unfortunately, no link yet from either its page on Philippine Journals Online or the Ateneo de Manila University, its parent institution, which would help make this open access journal more visible to scholars and other researchers via search engines.

At this point, Kasarinlan, whose archives go back to its first issue in 1985, is probably the Filipino open access journal with the most issues online. PS, however, should take the "lead" (not that there's any competition going on) once all its issues from 1953, which have already been digitized according to Filomeno Aguilar, Jr., its editor, are uploaded.

Note that there is a two-year embargo, which means that the latest PS issue available in full-text right now is from 2006. (No such embargo seems to exist for Kasarinlan, though its first issue for 2008 is still not online.) I suppose a mechanism will be provided in the future so that subscribers will eventually be able to access the most current issues. Also, like most of the journals mentioned in "FO: Open Access Journals," searching is limited to authors, titles, and abstracts—not the full text of articles—perhaps because the digitized files have not (yet?) been converted into searchable text.

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Filipino Book Historians in Manila

From left: Karina Bolasco, May Jurilla, Ambeth Ocampo and me.

The promise I made in "Filipino Book Historians in Oxford" has been fulfilled. The panel entitled "On the History of the Book in the Philippines" went very well this morning, despite a delayed start followed by technical difficulties, at the 8th International Conference on Philippine Studies. Papers were read in the following order:

Making a List: Analytical Bibliography,
Literary Historiography, and the Filipino Novel
PATRICIA MAY JURILLA

30 Years of Philippine Tradebook Publishing
KARINA BOLASCO

The Importance of the First Two Books
Printed in the Philippines
VERNON TOTANES

Publishing the History of
Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo
AMBETH OCAMPO

The best part came during lunch when a participant volunteered, with no prompting whatsoever, that ours was the best panel she had attended =)

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Filipiniana Online: CORMOSEA Bulletin 31 (2008)

The latest issue of the CORMOSEA Bulletin (pdf), published by the Committee on Research Materials on Southeast Asia (CORMOSEA), focuses on the Philippines. The articles include

"Documentary Sources on the History of Manila at the Archdiocesan Archives of Manila" by Rev. Fr. Roy M. Rosales (pp. 1-8)
"The Culion Leprosy Museum and Archives" by Ricardo L. Punzalan (pp. 9-18)
"Filipiniana Online" by Vernon R. Totanes (pp. 19-23)

I wrote the last article even before my presentation at the Rizal Library International Conference. Unfortunately, due to the unpredictability of the publication process, the article only came out now—a few months after Microsoft’s Live Search Books, one of the sites I recommended, was shut down.

The first paragraph of my article is reproduced below, so you can see whether you'd like to read the rest of it =)

"Online research" is supposed to be what lazy students do. Scholars, meanwhile, are expected to travel to different libraries, archives and museums to consult documents, photographs and books. This, however, is not necessarily true anymore because more and more resources are becoming available online. In some cases, surfing the web is not only less expensive, but also more productive because researchers can examine texts more closely and are not limited by policies regarding physical access to the materials.

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New Websites and the Future ofLibrarianship in the Philippines

What is the state of librarianship in the Philippines? I think the fact that PLAI and PATLS do not have websites says a lot about "Philippine librarianship in the 21st century."

This passage appeared toward the end of a post I wrote about the "Manila International Bookfair 2007." Well, the Philippine Librarians Association, Inc. (PLAI) still does not have a website (thankfully, some of its regional councils have active blogs), but the Philippine Association of Teachers of Library Science (PATLS) now has one that provides reason to hope that future Filipino librarians will be able to take full advantage of the possibilities offered by the Internet.

This development led me to think that it's time I featured some of the new—ok, in some cases, not all that new—websites that I've been hoping to blog about separately. So here goes...

Philippine Association of Teachers of Library Science (PATLS)

It's not quite fully functional yet, but take a look at the new president's speech on "Republic Act 9246 and LIS Education in the Philippines" to see where they're headed. The "Scholarship Program" will be helpful for students, but there don't seem to be any instructions on how to apply at this time.

Infolib

This free library software was one of the few I featured in "Free Library Software" that did not have a website where the software could be downloaded. Now it does. There's no forum for users yet, but there is a "Paypal Donate button," which association websites should consider emulating.

Medical and Health Librarian's Association of the Philippines (MAHLAP)

This association used to have a website that hadn't been updated in years, so this new website looks very promising. Its latest newsletter (pdf) may be downloaded, but either they're still working on making previous newsletters available or I just can't find the links to click.

PAARLWiki

This companion site to the official website of the Philippine Association of Academic and Research Librarians (PAARL) is probably the most complete and updated source for links to articles on, libraries in, standards for, organizations in and outstanding librarians from the Philippines. It has a very limited number of contributors (including this blogger), but most of the work has been done by Fe Angela M. Verzosa.

Finally, there are the websites of the UP School of Library and Information Studies (UP SLIS), the UP Future Library and Information Professionals of the Philippines (UP FLIPP) and the UP Library and Information Science Students’ Association (UP LISSA), all of which sport features that show its creators and readers are not only tech-savvy, but web-savvy.

The future of librarianship in the Philippines looks very bright indeed. I just hope all these websites will continue to be updated regularly.

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FO: Open Access Journals

In "Open Access in the Third World," I predicted that "the traditional journal will eventually have to be abandoned" and that "in a Third World country like the Philippines, it is, in my opinion, the only way to go." Two years later, it seems that the open access movement is finally gaining supporters in the Philippines. True, many of the journals listed below still do not make articles available in full text (so don't disregard my old list of "Journals" just yet), but enough of them have entire articles—not just abstracts or excerpts—available as PDFs that there is reason to believe that the others will follow suit eventually.

It is, I think, rather unfortunate that there seem to be two competing sites, instead of just one, but hey, whatever works! There are also other journals that could at least be listed with one or the other (e.g., Kritike, Philippine Journal of Science), but aren't. Here's hoping their editorial boards will see the wisdom of appearing on the same page as other Filipino journals.

The titles with one asterisk (*) are those that provide the full texts of some articles for free, while those with two asterisks (**) are those that make all articles available for download. If you discover that I missed putting an asterisk(s) after a title, please leave a comment below.


University of the Philippines Diliman Journals Online

Humanities Diliman*
Science Diliman*
Social Science Diliman*
Journal of English Studies and Comparative Literature*
Kasarinlan: Philippine Journal of Third World Studies**
Plaridel
Review of Women's Studies
Philippine Humanities Review
Diliman Review

Philippine Journals Online

Asia-Pacific Social Science Review
Augustinian
Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture**
DLSU Business & Economics Review**
Far Eastern University Communication Journal
Far Eastern University English Language Journal
Ideya**
Journal of Research in Science, Computing and Engineering
Kritika Kultura**
Loyola Schools Review
Malay
Mindanao Law Journal
Philippine Computing Journal**
Philippine Information Technology Journal**
Philippine Journal of Neurology
Philippine Journal of Psychology
Philippine Journal of Public Administration
Philippine Population Review
Philippine Sociological Review
Philippine Studies* (see also "FO: Philippine Studies")
Tambara
The Asia-Pacific Education Researcher
The Philippine Scientist*
University Belt Consortium Research Journal

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Filipino Librarians in Vancouver

Grace Valente (left) and Mercy Almodovar

Update: It just occurred to me that I should have used their first names below, instead of impersonal surnames, because it would have been fun to end the post with "Yes, I was blessed with Grace and Mercy" =)

In "Proudly Filipino in Vancouver," I promised to write about Filipino librarians in Vancouver. Well, three weeks later, I'm finally getting around to it. And that's pretty good, considering that I still have a lot of outstanding promises =)

Grace Valente and Mercy Almodovar were both librarians at the Ateneo de Manila when I was still in grade school. Valente moved to Canada a few years ago and was working at the BC Cancer Agency when I met her last month. But her biggest news was that she had gotten married only recently. Almodovar, meanwhile, migrated almost two decades ago and is now with a medical library affiliated with the University of British Columbia.

Valente was the one who allowed me to borrow books from the collection of bestsellers reserved for the faculty. She doesn't remember doing that for me, but I did. And the positive experience contributed to the generally positive image of librarians I had even before I became a librarian myself. The opposite is true, too, I suppose. When librarians—perhaps without realizing it—"terrorize" students, they not only perpetuate negative stereotypes about librarians, but also push students away from the library.

Almodovar was the moderator of the Rizal Book Club during one of the years when I was a member. She said that we students probably knew she was very nervous because she was still new then. But she seemed surprised when I told her that I didn't remember her that way at all. Tip to new librarians: Students won't consciously know you're nervous unless you give them reason to suspect that you are. So the image we project—of our profession and ourselves—is really up to us.

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