The Philippine Online Chronicles

A Manifesto calling for the establishment of Digital Libraries that would give more people more access to more literature.

Laurel and Other Discoveries

I’ve been doing research for a project that I’m working on. I, as do most writers, have various rackets that we work on that allow us to make the money we need, which allows us the time to write the stuff we really want to write. And so I found myself in the Ateneo Library and enthralled by a book written by Sotero Laurel, of the Laurel political clan.

The book, Politics of Change and Reforms for Progress, was published in 1965. In it I found the voice of the post-WWII pre-Martial Law Filipino intellectual. Laurel argued for the kind of political reforms that we still argue for today. And his writing about education remains markedly accurate and insightful and would be applicable to today’s Philippine educational system.

The cynical among us would stumble upon this text and be depressed by the fact that these issues were addressed five decades ago and have still gone unaddressed. Indeed that is a valid and lamentable point. But I found myself excited to find such a tradition of thought, and I could not help but think that if people saw that kind of optimism, that kind of belief that we Filipinos could accomplish so much (it’s a kind of optimism and confidence that we have sadly lost) then it would lead us to being inspired and working towards such goals. I came to believe that Laurel is not the only person who thought this way, and if more of this kind of thinking surfaced and became accessible to the public, then this could lead to a changing of consciousness.

I’m sure that there are a lot of books written by Filipinos that could rouse us to uplifting our people and our country. We’re all required to study Rizal, but often in high school his witty, funny, suspenseful, and wonderfully written novels are drained of their fun as students are told that they have to like them, instead of being allowed to appreciate them, and required to memorize details for exams rather than read them as literature. Along with improvements in teaching Rizal, I think we would benefit from seeing the output of generations of Filipino thinkers. I want to discover all this writing, as I discovered Laurel’s book.

Lack of Access

The problem is that we don’t have access to these books. Most books in the Philippines get one publishing run (which amounts to somewhere between 500-1500 copies usually) and if it doesn’t hit best-seller and generate another print run, then it will wither away in a bookstore before finding itself in the bargain bins at book fairs, or on the shelves of the Filipiniana sections of school libraries where, at least in my experience at the UP and Ateneo libraries, there is no opportunity to browse through books freely. You have to fill out request forms, and this means you’d have to know what you’re looking for.

And if I (or most likely we, as I tend to assume, dear reader, that you are also educated, metropolitan, middle class or upwards) have trouble getting access to these books, what more the multitude of students all over the country that have limited access to these books and other resources.

It is my firm belief that if students are exposed to such literature, certain books specifically that would inspire students (and I’m not talking here of inspirational books, but of books that show great thought and accomplishment that would make students want to do similar things), and also a body of knowledge that is proudly Filipino and generally comprehensive, showing the intellectual accomplishments of Filipinos, would all go a long way towards developing our social and cultural consciousness, shaping the youth’s view of themselves, their nation, and the future of both.

The Pitch

So here’s the pitch: an online digital library made available to all users though a public system, funded by the government and businesses that want to contribute to the cause, run by academics, students, scholars, readers, and anyone else who wants to help out.

Vibal Foundation is doing its own work with this, digitizing a lot of publications and offering it in the already-expansive Filipiniana.net. The government funded project

Philippine e-Lib is also digitizing many libraries. And the EU has its own similar project which seeks preserve its heritage through digitizing. But this would be an even more massive undertaking, one that, if accomplished, could change education, access to knowledge, and I like to believe, our country, all for the better.

I see two main issues here that have to be addressed: access and interest. Both of these have to be running at the same time. Access will refer to reader/user access to books and other educational media, while interest will refer to reader/user interest in partaking of books and other educational media. If you provide access to everything, but no one is interested, then you’ve just got a pile of books taking up space. And if you generate interest but don’t provide access, then readers will get frustrated and lose interest. So these have to work in concert, and I think that as these virtual libraries grow, interest can grow with them.

So how will it work?

As previously mentioned a lot of literature is out of print and is lying around in either school libraries or personal libraries. These works have no more commercial value, and re-releases of these books probably wouldn’t generate enough to offset the costs of printing. Thus on a commercial level, these books are dead.

But these books still have value as cultural objects, and like the Laurel book that I found, all these books still have the potential to inspire, educate, and entertain. The goal then, should be to digitize all of these books tucked away in libraries and make these accessible to readers.

This would entail two processes: 1) Making them digital; and 2) making them accessible.

Digitizing Dilemmas

The main problems in making them digital would be locating all of these books, clearing their copyrights, and then the physical process of digitizing them.

In locating these books, I think that librarians in universities and colleges could be tapped to do this, as well as personal collectors. What would be even more helpful is if publishers, authors, or the families of authors (if the author has passed away) offered their books for digitization. Publishers may think that this would translate to less sales, but examples from the West show that offering free digital copies can generate sales when used properly. If the author has passed away, then digital reproduction of the book would lead to prestige for their family member, and authors would benefit from the publicity and access

Clearing copyrights could be complicated, but if it were made apparent that this whole project is being done for the public good, then I think it might convince copyright holders to forego legal proceedings, if not directly allowing this digitizing for educational purposes.

And third, the process of digitizing these books. There are a lot of scanners now running for really cheap. And I was thinking that if this became a community effort among writers and academics, then a simple initiative like, say, each person committing himself or herself to digitizing a number of books and contributing them to the effort would make considerable progress. I’ve written three books myself, and turning them into PDFs would only take a few seconds. With the initiative being developing culture and making literature accessible, most authors could be convinced to do the same I think. If we establish reading centers, we could have the librarians running them ready to digitize books that owners offer to the center.

Creating Access Points

Now let’s say we’ve got the ball rolling. Authors and book owners are sending in digital copies. We have to offer access points. It’s no secret that our public libraries are shabby, if they exist at all. But if we could find places that would serve as reading centers, or even just reading rooms, then we could fill that physical space with media that would allow readers/users access to the system. Computers are cheap now, and it’s clear that digitized books and educational media won’t be needing crazy graphics processing or anything like that. All you need are machines that can read PDFs and video, and that can access the network.

So we’ve got physical spaces where people can go to read. Next is having a network through which they could access all the digitized media available. I think that the whole library of Philippine literature, in PDF format, could probably fit into a few TBs worth of hard drives. And there is, for me, the exciting prospect that since all of these libraries or reading rooms would be networked, that if someone brings a book to share in one library, that book can get scanned, saved, and put on the network so that anyone else in the country can have access to a copy of that book.

I believe that the digitizing of books would be an ongoing process. As people rediscover old books, as authors come out with new books, and other content is digitized and added to the network (libraries keep newspapers and magazines for a certain amount of time, and then convert them into microfiche, it wouldn’t be too weird to hope that they provide digital copies of their publications; journals, theses, dissertations and other academic content which used to be restricted to specialists could hopefully be made available to everyone), the network would grow progressively. The compiling of books would never end, and it’s my hope that as more people gain access, they will be inspired to contribute their own work to the network.

Generating Interest

As we establish access to the massive repository of Philippine thought, we must also create interest in it. I see that this could be done with a two-pronged approach: 1) the reading centers/rooms aren’t just places to read, but offer programs that would encourage reading; and 2) the reading centers/rooms would work with schools and other educational institutions to promote reading.

I take the idea of programs offered by the reading centers from my own personal experience with libraries. As a kid, the public library near my house offered a reading program. You could join the reading club, and you had to finish a certain number of books per month. After reading those books you wrote short book reports about them. If you hit the book requirement for the month, you got to join in on the book club party where you’d have snacks and watch a movie that was an adaptation of one of the books in the library (it’s how I first saw The Hobbit and The Last Unicorn). There was a sense of community and a sense of accomplishment gained from reading. Beyond these rewards, my librarian would sit around with me and talk about the books that I read, and there was a good deal of confidence and accomplishment gained from those talks.

I’m not saying that this approach would translate perfectly to the Philippine context, but I believe that similar programs can be crafted that would encourage kids to read. I know that reading has to compete with TV, movies, and video games, but I do believe that there is a way to generate interest. Each reading center would have to figure out their own projects and approaches to drawing readers. But then once effective practices are found, these can be shared and tweaked to fit in other communities, much like what government agencies and NGOs do with their projects.

And we can’t stop with kids. Appealing to adults would also be important, especially if we are to develop this culture of reading and a greater value of education. Perhaps even more fulfilling than to inspire a child to have a healthy thirst for knowledge would be to find people who dropped out of school and get them to reconsider education and learning. It’s no secret that there are a lot of methods that are still employed that are detrimental to learning and actually cause people to want to stop going to school. But to offer them an experience where they could define what they learn about and how they learn might entice a lot of people to start reading and educating themselves.

We don’t have a culture of book clubs and I don’t suppose we will in the near future (nor do I think we really need one). But we have to find a way for everyday people to engage in discourse over literature, politics, society, culture, and pretty much anything else. Encouraging a culture of thinking and discourse could be one of the greatest things these digital libraries and reading rooms could accomplish.

Harnessing Cognitive Surplus

I think that the network through which readers/users access books can be created with a social networking component, which would increase use and user connection. Users reading the same text could exchange notes. Students writing papers on the same topic could collaborate. The Filipino penchant for social networking, if harnessed towards intellectual activity, would generate a massive amount of discourse. Can you imagine the cognitive surplus that is devoted to Farmville, Mafia Wars, Plants vs. Zombies, and other games, if it were redirected towards intellectual/academic pursuits?

And beyond the initiatives of the reading centers and digital libraries themselves would be projects undertaken with schools and other institutions that should have a hand in education, such as local government units. The linkages that could be developed would further the reach of this project.

At present, this is all just a thought experiment, some ideas that I’ve had that I bounced off of friends. But if people start getting behind this and start making steps towards digitizing a library then it might be a start. Convincing government agencies or international organizations that want to help promote education and learning, as well as local companies that would like to contribute to this cause, would be a big step towards making this a reality.

We can’t establish traditional book-filled libraries in every barangay. It would just be too expensive. But we can try to make literature more accessible to more people in our country with initiatives like this. It takes people willing to share their books, people willing to supply computers and the network infrastructure, and people willing to try and make this project come alive. That’s the 20%. The 80% is getting the readers to come in and read and make the whole project matter.

Consider this a manifesto that’s still in the works. Pass it around, share it, place comments, augment my suggestions and show how this could be done better. If you know institutions that would believe in and support such an initiative, then please get them to read this. Help me turn this from a thought experiment to a real, working system that could reach every Filipino.