Week 9: Metamorphosis and Cataloging
Ciao Journal!
We’re now down to the penultimate week of my stay here in the UP Department of History. The shelves are now nearing its completion and I couldn’t help but be happy about my progress. Wait--did I even mention the SA who was helping me all this time? It was Marvin Tenecio who prints the Call Numbers and paste them in the books. Marvin is a Philippine Studies major from the College of Arts and Letters and he is also the correspondent of the Philippine Collegian for the #votewatchUPD coverage in SLIS, SURP, SOLAIR and NCPAG. He told me that he has been meaning to ask me about some of the misconceptions about our degree program. He started off when he asked me about our existence in the University. I told him that the UP SLIS traces its roots back in 1921 when the first Library Science subjects were taught under the College of Liberal Arts of the University of the Philippines then in the City of Manila. Some of the prominent names who taught LS subjects are Mary Polk, James Alexander Robertson and Gabriel A. Bernardo. These three have immeasurable contribution to the development of the Library profession in the country. In 1961, exactly 40 years after the first LS subjects were offered, the Institute of Library Science (ILS) was founded. As years passed by, technology has evolved and the need for the establishment of a Library and Information Science institute has grown thus the first LIS Institute in the country, the Institute of Library and Information Science (ILIS) was founded that was renamed as the School of Library and Information Studies that we know today. He was shocked to know that the UP SLIS is way older than most colleges and schools in Diliman. He thought that we’re new. I replied to him that because the administration of UP Diliman kept on overlooking us for so long. Some of the people believe that our profession is a dying profession, some believe that it would be obselete in the coming years. I daresay no. We will not die. We will simply rebrand ourselves to become something new. Like Metamorphosis in the life cycle of a butterfly. I told him that being a LIS major is a difficult task--the ever changing platform of information is fluid and dynamic. The need for more authoritative sources is imminent and our battle against fake news is a must-see scenario. I told him, that what I’m doing right now--Cataloging is one way of fighting fake news. With resources arranged properly, access and dissemination of information are enabled. You give the people more chances of getting to the right information instead of letting them sift through the unprocessed and uncataloged resources. I told him that enabling an information literate society is the goal of LIS-- all of its fields, General Librarianship, Medical Librarianship, Law Librarianship, Information Systems and Archives and Records Management. Lastly, I told him that whatever happen in this world, we will not become obsolete. We shall never be branded as dead. Cataloging along with its peers in the General Librarianship field and together with the rest of the LIS fields will continue the crusade against misinformation and disinformation.
