Professional Documents
Culture Documents
by
MILSGROS SANTOS-ONG
Information and Communications
Technology in Library Trends, Security & Ethics
Kimberly Hotel, Malate, Manila, April 28, 2006
Let me emphasize that team effort is needed for we have to accept the
fact that Library education here in the Philippines does not prepare us for
Digitization or related activity. Technical skills in needed. The traditional
staffing pattern for a library does not have this needed IT staff. These IT
skills have to be up-tot-date. I had to sacrifice the abolition of two librarian
items and convert them to Administrative Officer items (with DBM
approval) in order to be able to hire computer science graduates.
Does this mean that the Librarian is obsolete or useless. The answer
should be a resounding NO. Why did I say should be? Despite the lack of
IT skill, the Librarian must know the work to be done, supervise work being
done and make sure that one knows how to use it. With this the Librarian
can establish his place into the whole project/activity. The Librarian must
not allow the IT people rule over the entire project.
Teamwork with other institution facilitates the implementation of the
digitization project. As an example is the Memorandum of Agreement
between the University of the Philippines (UP) and the Supreme Court.
Time was saved in the scanning of all the National Administrative Register
(NAR) which contains all the rules and regulations of government offices.
UP gave the Court the digitized image copy. All that we needed to do is to
convert it to text files, format it and index it readable to dtSearch. In turn,
the Court provided all the UP College of Law Professors and the Law
Library access to the E-Library. Xdeal.
This similar arrangement is being negotiated with the Department of
Foreign Affairs for complete original treaties entered into by the Philippines,
with the Records Office of Malacanang for the complete laws and
presidential issuances from 1901-1985 and DOJ for their Microfilm of the
Official Gazette. As for the later, we were supposed to buy those from the
National Library but their image files are not clear and so they could not be
converted into text files.
The E-Library did not start with a big bag and a big budget. Right at
the start, it was in-house with a P20,000 budget representing the (5) five
scanners and filling up of our 3 vacant items as technical staff and the
purchase if the dtsearch software was purchased, $2,500 (P137,500.00) for
web search engine and $7,500 (P412,500) perpetual and unlimited right to
CD search engine or a total of $10,000 or P550,000. Looking at this figures,
the most expensive is the software for retrieval of P550,000. However, the
cost can only be P137,500.00 if it is solely for web application. There now
companies which are offering less expensive search engines. There are some
companies who offer FREE search engine software for materials that they
digitize. One such company is Floro Foto.
After the launching in November 2004, 7 data encoders hired and 5
scanners with feeders were purchased. Two of the staff of Justice Carpio
take care of the web and other technical requisites. With the 10 full time
staff, 10 scanners and a software expense of P550,000, what have we
accomplished in one year and five months? Digitization of Supreme Court
decisions from 1996 to present and Rules and Regulations of the Court from
1973 to present. The rest will be discussed later.
To facilitate the digitization of Supreme Court decisions from 19011995 which are almost 300,000 pages, we outsourced it to Florofoto for
almost 2 million. With this amount, the contract provides that the final
output will be in two forms: 1) text file which had to comply with the format
that we have specified and 2) image file. Outsourcing has been a by line
in the news these days because of its economic value and is a solution to
managerial constraints like manpower, space etc. Outsourcing is not only in
digitization but in almost everything including even cleanliness or security
of a company. It is however important to define the work to be done and
review all output before acceptance. We were about to buy the image file of
the Official Gazette, Constitutional Convention proceedings and the
Malcolm Collection of the National Library for almost one million.
However, it turned out that the images were either blurred or dirty and they
could not be converted to text file. We had to cancel our purchase order
even though funds have been allotted.
Our contract with Floro provided 100% accuracy before acceptance.
So when they deliverthe digitized form, we proof read it and if 100%
accurate, we accept. If not, we return with the corrections. In some libraries
outsourcing is donem the librarians or their staff does the proof reading after
the scanning. In digitization, the proof reading after the scanning is the most
tedious job or the pinakamadugo. Next is the formatting or styling.So now
you can see how much time and manpower we were able to save with the
contract with Floro. We were able to save time not only in proof reading but
also in formatting to comply with the dtsearch requirement.
.
Now that the public have seen how effective it has become, there are
requests not only from lawyers, law students and even the public here and
abroad to be able to access the E-Library. In a recent judicial reform
conference in Australia, there were request that links be made to the
Supreme Court of their won countries. With the success of the E-Library, we
are still moving forward. Before the end of the year, three big open book
scanners will be purchased for the digitization of the decisions of the Court
of Appeals which are found in 2,200 volumes of almost a thousand pages for
each volume. Next will be the Court of Tax Appeals.
Digitization is requires an tremendous amount of dedicated work.
One virtue that is needed for people involved in digitization is to be
METICULOUS throughout the process, end to finish. At times even though
information is already the web, monitoring is still done to maintain accuracy.
METICULOUS is one virtue that majority of librarian possess. Its success
however will not only double the amount of work inputted. The benefits an
exceptional library service and/or information delivery is immeasurable or
boundless.
The E-Library has a powerful search engine (Dtsearch) which allows
its users to retrieve its search in seconds. It contains all the full text digitized
sources of Philippine law and a Memorabilia of Retired Justices of the
Supreme Court as follows:
a. LAWS
Constitutions from the Malolos Constitution to the present 1987
Constitution. It will also include a comparative presentation of
the 1935, 1973 and the 1987 Constitutions and the 1935, 1973
and 1986 Constitutional Proceedings.
Legislative enactments from 1901 (Acts) to present (Republic
Acts)
Treaties entered into by the Philippines from 1946 to present
Shariaa Law
B. JURISPRUDENCE
Decisions, published and unpublished decisions of the
Supreme Court from 1901 to present.
.
F. MEMORABILIA
Devoted to retired Justices of the Supreme Court with their picture, a
brief biography, decisions, available articles, and speeches of each
retired Justice of the Supreme Court.