Move on

I just finished reading an invitation sent via email to the 1st Quezon City Librarians Congress this coming 22-23 Feb at Hotel Rembrandt with the theme "ICT Issues and Concerns for Librarians and Information Professionals". I also remember of another seminar which will be held next week organized by the Ortigas Center Library Consortium on developing communication and leadership skills.

Although I laud the organizers for their efforts, these have already been themes of many a seminars years ago.

I did look at the QC Librarians Congress program and the only ones I find interesting are the talk on Information Literacy by Mrs. Lourdes David, which I believe is a very timely issue and which should be advocated not only by the accredited professional association but librarians as a whole and given that Quezon City librarians were the subjects of an IL study, and that of Mrs. Susima Gonzales on updates in the profession. However, if you're a subscriber to the e-groups at Yahoo and Google and have been reading Von's blog, you'd be pretty much up to date with what's happening to Philippine librarianship. And with all due respect to the other speakers Dr. Ofelia Carague and Ms. Perla Garcia, who are very knowledgeable in their respective fields, I do hope they will be dishing out something librarians do not know yet.

I have been on the board of a couple of library associations in the country and coming up with a conference is no walk in the park and requires a lot of brainstorming and a lot of creativity. A good place to start would be the Filipino Librarians Googlegroup where there are a couple of relevant issues and discussions posted and a number of possible resource persons from the group.

More of an appeal than a suggestion to professional library associations in the Philippines, please move out of your comfort zones and do not be afraid to tread untested waters because that is the only way for the profession to grow. For instance I've read from Inquirer Online that more public schools will be recipients of PCs from NGOs under various IT for Development Programs, so where does the public school librarian stand in the scheme of things? Would they simply be bystanders and fence-sitters or be actively involved in training? This could be a good topic for a forum.

We need to look at the bigger picture on how we as librarians can contribute to the greater good without losing focus on what we do. Otherwise we're taking a step forward and two steps back.