PLAI-Bicol Region Librarians Council

 Previous Features







   We are inviting you to submit a historical write up of your library and a short biographical write up about your librarian to be one of the feature of the month.

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For more information contact:

Imelda R. Brazal

Secretary, BRLC

dangbrazal@gmail.com

Feature of the Month 

The Library 

To HUB—and to LOVE books

             The City of Hearts, Masbate City was one of the first batch build a Library Hub located at the Dep Ed City Division. Fortunately an old building was converted into a Library with 20,000+ books for public school children. Masbate City was very lucky to have such opportunity to have books for the students. The persistence effort and patience of the former Superintendent Anita Castillo and with the collaborative effort of the Department of Education, the Local Government Unit and Donors made the Library Hub happen.             

            The Masbate CIty Library Hub envisions to be the best information center in the city and throughout the Bicol Region in making every Masbateño child a reader imbued with valus and life skills. It's primary objective is to bring books to all public schools, elementary and secondary schools, as well as to provide supplementary materials in the teaching and learning process in the classroom within the city.

Librarians at the Library Hub were usually asked, what is a Library hub? Maybe all of us are neither familiar nor never heard about Library Hub. It is a “warehouse and wholesale” library exclusively servicing public elementary schools in a schools division by providing supplementary reading materials in plastic bins and sorted by subject area.

Now after knowing what a Library hub is, next questions asked would be Why a Library Hub? A Hub is a center of circulation of books. It aims to develop love and habit of reading among grade-schoolers and further to improve their reading and comprehension skills. The project supports the Dep ED’s “Every Child a Reader (by Grade III) Program. (ECARP)

Since 2007 the Library Hub exists to serve, provide and bring books to all public schools within the City Division. All the programs and activities they conducted are designed and planned to cater the need of their clients, their “bosing” the children. The activities were as follows: Book sa sulok/Book Exhibit, Storytelling the most wanted of the students, door-door reading campaign, re-telling a story and read a-thon etc. These activities help them support their advocacy and carry out their mission. Having different activities offers innovative, creative and effective strategy in giving emphasis on student’s English proficiency, widen ones imagination and as well as to strengthen literacy. Thus in this way the Library Hub widen the services to provide authentic and informal learning experience to reach out to the community and students to develop a habit of reading through books available at the Library Hub as the real beneficiary of this project.

The library hub of Masbate City’s achievement will never be complete without the support of the two-library hub coordinators Jeanette M. romblon EPS-English and Noel D. Logronio EPS-Filipino and most especially with the approval and full support of their brilliant Schools Division Superintendent Nene r. Merioles, together with ERlinda R. Gonzaga (Principal) and Annie R. ZaRagoza, and the librarian herself, Miss Jessalyn Malanyaon.

What keeps them working and going in their journey to serve their bosing—children? No one could ever imagine that each activity equates priceless smile, hope and thoughtfulness in their eyes. Despite the risk of their own lives on the travel, not considering the distance of the far flung barangay schools or going another island in the City. The hustle of means of transportation by land or by boat, preparing all the stuff and organizing the activity was never a little reason to stop us from going on with their activities. The pressure of negative reactions sometimes leads to belittling their effort otherwise the tough experiences discouraged and tempted them not to pursue an activity and just ignore their responsibility. But in the other hand if they will be affected and give up then it shows that the activity was nothing and without importance. Maybe others would think that the activities were just easy or simple or may not resolve any problems on reading/comprehension. But they believed that anything can start from a small thing. A big tree before it grows beautifully and bare fruits it started as a small, single seedling. The same with their activity at the library hub it was their baby, maybe it was not the best activity to address the problem on non-readers at least they did something; they did their part to make solutions to big problems of non-readers in schools.

Thus their effort and belief wasn’t enough to make their activity successful unless each and every part of the learning experience of the students believed and took effort to in making students be better individual in the future.

Moreover, the activities were not only for selected pupil that’s why they went to schools rather than waiting for their clients. After each activity strengthen and continued to inspire them with the experiences that made diamonds that kept in their hearts. Indeed the activities had a tremendous effect in catching and nurturing the student’s interest to read books. And also gave justice to these value-laden children’s books, most of which are award-winning and highly recommended by academicians and reading experts. Mostly it was written by Filipino writers. These books are also called as Aklat ng Pinoy!. In a way the Library Hub gave the opportunity for this awesome and delightful work of our hometown grown tales and remind us to look into our own folktales, myths, and legends and more importantly appreciate our own literature.

The Librarian 

          Behind the beauty of a library is a hardworking librarian. Miss Jessalyn Malanyaon, Jhing as called by many is the current Librarian of the Masbate City Library Hub. Born on August 25, 1985 and was raised in the peaceful town of Calabanga, Camarines Sur, with her ever-loving family. She graduated Bachelor of Library and Information Science in Ateneo de Naga University and passed the board examination for librarians shortly after graduation.

          This friendly, young and hardworking librarian has brought to the world the beauty of her library through the use of social media and technology. With so much effort, she was able to improved the library main functions, conduct formal orientations and created a portal of her library to the social world. You can visit her library through it library website at: http://masbatecitylibraryhub.weebly.com/blog.html.

          As part of her future plans for herself and her library, she intends to further study in the course of librarianship and to fully automate the Library Hub of Masbate. She thanks God for giving her this opportunity to work as Librarian. It’s a humbling and inspiring job for her. She's grateful that maybe she was destined to work in this place to be able to see and live the simplicity of life there in Masbate City. And, she realized that being happy in you work doesn’t required a big or small compensation, beautiful facilities, nor working on the most prestigious school in town or because it’s the best Library in the world. After all, at the end of the day those things are not much important what’s more important is the things you cannot see of your bare eyes but the things you’ve done and contributed to help the children achieve their education and guide them to reach the highest excellence they can eveachieved.  After more than one year of journey she's proud to say that she'd learn to love Masbate through the amazing, meaningful and stunning learning experiences that she gained, and then it helps her to be a better librarian throughout the years, working with beautiful and loving persons at the Dep Ed Masbate City, keeps her going.  

        She also believes that librarians are ambassadors of knowledge. They lead to give right and authentic information to clients. The essence of our work does not end there, we are called to do not just only what is expected of us. We are working not only to perform our job. We librarians work far beyond the limitations of our job descriptions. 

Keep it up Ma’am Jhing! :)

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