WHEN THE IDEA of a library hub WAS first conceptualized in 2003 by former Education Undersecretary Juan Miguel Luz, it did sound like a great but wild idea that would lead nowhere. The concept seemed too good to be true, too idealistic to fly; for it had no budget to give it wings. It appeared like an emergency stop-gap measure to immediately address the lack of libraries in public schools in the country. Rather than striving to do the impossible task of equipping every public school with a library, it called for a warehouse and wholesale type of library that would service not just one, but several schools in the school divisions of the Department of Education. The library clientele would not be the individual students directly but a school-designated teacher who would borrow on a ?wholesale? basis?in bulk?for the school she represents. The innovative idea would truly maximize the available resources, generally limited, for our large student population in 17 regions and 38,000-plus elementary schools.
For long lurking behind every department directive to make every child a reader was the rather embarrassing question: Does the child have a book to read? Yes, much like the child daring to remark on the emperor?s new clothes.
There were fears that with the bureaucracy?s notoriously dismal track record when it came to faithful diligence, maintenance and sustainability, the project would be short-lived?especially with the successive changing of the guards at the DepEd.
Quite a relief that those fears are surprisingly unfounded, for five years after the first batch of 35 library hubs was first established in the 2004-2005 school year and through the administrations of Education Secretaries Edilberto de Jesus, Florencio Abad, OICs Ramon Bacani and Fe Hidalgo and incumbent Jesli Lapus, support and interest in the hubs have been sustained. Long after the resignation of Luz, the original proponent, the project is alive and well and has grown to 105 hubs today (after three years of implementation), all of which offer full services?a 20-calendar day loan period of plastic bins of books classified by topic and grade level?to their clientele.
Former Education Undersecretary for Finance and Administration Teodosio C. Sangil Jr., himself a passionate reader, should be credited for the continuing life span of the Library Hub Project, something to be marveled about in itself. Unfortunately, the DepEd has lost Sangil to the private sector where he originally came from. It is hoped that his successor, Assistant Secretary Jesus G. Galvan continues the commendable work that Sangil began. Galvan cannot do otherwise for right in his office are the true zealous workhorses behind the project, Beverly Gonda Berame, project head, and special assistant Herman Belles.
If the project is projected, on its fifth year, to boast of 240 hubs for 141 school divisions, and ambitiously pledges at least one hub for all the 186 divisions of schools by 2010, it may truly have the gravitas to convene the Library Hub Project teams to a first national convention next week?on Nov. 23-26 at the Bayview Hotel on Roxas Boulevard.
The most special reason for the event is the awarding of the winners of the Most Functional Library Hubs from among the first 35. A monitoring team was dispatched to visit and evaluate each of the hubs which have marked two years of operation. The evaluation covered library management, circulation figures, physical maintenance and networking with the local government and community groups. It is one thing to have the physical structure and the bins of 25,000 to 45,000 books, and quite another thing to have a working staff headed by a professional librarian whose main reason for being should be the circulation of those book bins. A library is not a library if all its books are neatly shelved in place or in the hub world, neatly packed in plastic bins.
The true gauge of the success of a library hub is not only in the impressive statistics of the number of hubs to serve an X number of schools, because these are not convincing stories in themselves. Or even that the mean percentage scores in English of the students in the division have manifested remarkable increases. What we await to hear are the stories of teachers and students whose personal and school lives have brightened up somehow and opened up to other worlds with books and reading. With the names of the most outstanding library hubs made public in a few days, these rated hubs ought to serve as model book havens.
The DepEd could not have timed its convention better for?whether by design or because of a scheduling fluke?it is an appropriate way to celebrate the 73rd National Book Week from Nov. 24 to Nov. 30, as originally mandated by President Quezon in 1936. Here?s to books and good reading and an important week awaiting to be truly celebrated?and institutionalized. And not just by the strength or the weakness of the DepEd memoranda, or executive orders, or presidential decrees.
Neni Sta. Romana Cruz is a member of the Philippine Board on Books for Young People, the Foundation for Worldwide People Power, and a trustee of the Sa Aklat Sisikat Foundation. E-mail comments to nenisrc@gmail.com.
