Viktor Kevin S.

Rubio English 10-THW3

2012-79402 3/3/16

Two Most Critical Challenges for Public Libraries, Here and in the US

In 2010, the American Library Association (ALA) was nearing their election

season and their two presidential candidates were asked to make a statement about

the two most critical challenges public libraries currently face. The ALA community

deemed the two most critical problems to be specifically about funding and

technology. I would first like to say that these two issues are indeed most critical in

public libraries; not only in the US but also here in the Philippines. While the two

candidates had slight differences in what strategies to use, they both had

understandably similar sentiments about the issue.

First is the issue of funding. Presidential candidate Sara Kelly Johns

mentioned in her statement that it is “critical for a strong and successful public

library to receive adequate funding”. This actually holds true for any institution to

thrive in today’s very competitive service market. Obtaining funds for public libraries

can be highly complicated and more importantly highly political. Two key factors that

observers may not be wary of is that public libraries are considered a government

agency; thus they would have to fight and justify for the government to add or even

just to keep funding them. In 2010, America’s economy had recently turned sour and

agencies were in a proverbial rumble to maintain funding. And the second key factor

(actually related to the issue of funding) is valuation. We are now living in the so-
called “digital age” and with the widespread use of the internet and mobile devices,

traditional public libraries have unfortunately lost the appeal it once had. A person

outside the academic/research sphere would probably consider public libraries as

relics of the past, understandably with good reason. Why go to the library if you can

just Google any information you wanted on your phone? This pedestrian opinion

unfortunately holds true for parent organizations from which libraries (including

public ones) acquire funding. In the case of public libraries, government agencies or

whoever the powers that be have poor valuation of said public libraries.

Consequently, institutions that garner poor valuation from their parent

organizations struggle immensely just to stay funded.

Both candidates expressed strategies to overcome this funding issue. Some of

these strategies include lobbying with elected officials for support, organizing

grassroot campaigns, and partnerining with organizations related to the cause of the

library. These strategies sound hopeful specifically for their country because they

have a lot of organizations that share the cause of maintaining the relevance of

libraries, public and otherwise. But specifically speaking for the libraries in our

country, I am inclined to make an educated assumption that the same strategies will

not work. If I am to speak boldly, I would have to say that our government and much

of our elected officials really do not care about libraries. I doubt they even care all

that much about education, what with the K-12 issue still going on as of the moment.

I could easily write a ten-page essay as to how our government doesn’t care about the

education, literacy, and informational well-being of the Filipino people. I will,

however, name a few issues regarding this. First, the current administration (and I

fear any of the next possible administrations, barring Miriam Santiago’s) appear to

have no push for the betterment in education of the Filipino people. Schools are

underfunded, the country’s academic program is ill-implemented (at best), and the

state of many public libraries are absolutely abhorrent. Second, CHED and DepEd

seem to not give a damn about the library programs in any level of standard

education. If you check CHED and DepEd’s criteria for library accreditation online,

you could (as a person of the academe) easily deem it as incompetent. Third, there is

very little evident push coming from either public or private sectors for Filipinos to

be better educated and informed. All of this is a reflection of a government and a

society that cares very little about thinking critically. It makes sense to me that

elected and hopeful government officials give little to no push to better educate

Filipinos; because they would lose the unthinking sheep who would otherwise vote

for them. But I have to digress.

Moving forward to the second critical issue—technology, I have previously

stated that we are now living in the digital age. In an era where Facebook is generally

deemed necessary for various aspects of one’s life, traditional libraries that fail to

address the current technological needs of its community have no choice but to perish.

In the two candidate’s statement regarding this issue, they likewise expressed

possible solutions such as overhauling their staff to primarily include people who are

technologically-inclined, adding popular current technology to their resources, and

most importantly catering better to their biggest demographic—the Millennials. This

all seems very much doable both in the US and here in the Philippines. But to address

the issue of technology in libraries, we inevitably go back to the first issue of funding.

The issue unfortunately keeps coming back to money matters, and that’s where it

always keeps bottle-necking. Going back to our country, it pains me that while our

public libraries struggle very hard to stay relevant, budget constraints just get in the

way. For example, our local public library here in Brgy. Talipapa, Tandang Sora tries

to stay relevant by having personal computers with internet access. The problem is

that the personal computers are only capable of running Windows 2000. To give

context, the most current Windows OS right now is Windows 10—this means that my

local public library is 5 generations behind. And while they do offer internet access,

they do so at abysmally slow speeds. I do not place blame on my local public library

for trying, but rather I blame once again the powers that be for being so indifferent

about this cause.

In summary, I agree with the two ALA presidentiables about the two most

critical issues public libraries are currently facing. These issues are indeed

alarmingly relevant and important. And while their strategies seem hopeful to me, I

have to remain skeptical of whether it will actually resolve these issues because the

dying relevance of libraries in societies worldwide have long been a problem. I even

remember watching a Twilight Zone episode from the 80’s calling librarians obsolete.

As for the Philippines, I place little to no hope that the government will do anything

about the horrid state of public libraries and education in general; at least in the near

foreseeable future.