Project: Living Libraries-Museums in Barangays

In the first place, we have to broaden our concept of museums and libraries, expanding from the common notions that we have had. These pertain to large collections of artifacts and books that the community members would not care to visit more than once in their lifetimes. Why the lack of interest? Because the community members usually have to travel far from their village residences to visit the museums and libraries in large buildings in the capital cities. And even when they go and get to cross the intimidating portals, they can hardly find anything in there that relates to their own lives.

How about having community museums and libraries with reading materials that refer to the lives of the very people of these same communities -- the large clans, the large groupings of economic sectors like the farmers, the fisherfolks, the business people, the professionals and government functionaries. We plan to set up a network of such local institutions, each to be called "Bahay-Liwanag."

Leaders and members of youth organizations can be trained to conduct all the necessary interviews with the people, especially the elderly who remember well enough the life patterns of social and economic interactions, of cultural routines of a typical year in the life of the village,, etc., etc. And the best among the youthful functionaries can also be trained on how best to exercise prudent editorial judgment so as to make each item or set of items contribute to unifying the community members on the basis of a shared view of their own history, a shared view of their collective journey as a community of people and not just a cluster of buildings and houses.

A very helpful factor for success in this endeavor is the computer technology, which includes the internet. Add to this the welcoming and inclusionary culture of Wikkipedia, which encourages viewers to post their own comments or their own articles to complete the picture on many subjects, a participatory culure that can be adopted by the With the community library’s set of competent editors standing as moderators, the community itself would in fact be conducting a continuing forum on their living history and on the available options for their current decision-making and direction-setting on how best to pursue their collective stakeholdership in their collective future. This library can also publish single-sheet hard-copy alerts on new contents and new acquisitions.

The current type of museums with artifacts displayed far from touching hands of the viewers can be helped much by the digital video-making technology so the artifacts can be viewed really close-up without ever endangering them to destruction by prying hands, and the background sound can include clear explanations about each artifact’s details, history, and continuing significance.

Enabling Technology: Computers and the Internet

The entire collection of the 'Bahay-Liwanag' can be uploaded onto its own website that can be accessible to all community members – those who are still living there and those who have gone to work and now live in other areas of the country and even overseas. Those who have left the area can still be intimately linked to local goings-on and could therefore be motivated to continue participating in local affairs and contributing to local progress.

And if a substantial number of barangays have this website facility as rooted well in their respective community museums and libraries, all these barangays can interact on-line and achieve a grander on-line bayanihan for shared learnings and mutual progress.
And don’t count out the tourists and foreign scholars, or foreign markets for the communities’ local products, who can all access the websites from wherever they are in the world.
And it can all be rooted in this 'Bahay-Liwanag.'

The barangay community derives its name from the ancient large boats our ancestors used to live in while journeying out at sea. And every current-day community is also traveling in at least two different simultaneous dimensions.
One dimension is physical. The community’s children are continuously traveling out to other areas or other countries, and they could be served well by these community libraries so as not to be cut off completely from their home villages.

The entire barangay is also traveling along their respective paths of development which should never make them forget their collective history and their patrimony. The community library, with its own website, can serve well as a veritable lighthouse to continue guiding these travels. Non-resident community members can be asked to help generate resources for this project possibly through advertising placement solicitations.

Piloting for Launch: Initial Collection, Computerization of Data

For this project's soft-launch within the 16-day period of the 'Pistahang Kamalaysayan,' we are going to start data collection and computerization in at least three barangay communities, two within Metro Manila and one outside. The initial information would consist of summary descriptions of the current patterns of behavior of the community members relative to their cultural, natural and economic resources. Cultural here pertains mainly to common habits and factors for social cohesion, including the arts mainstreamed in community life.

To be added immediately are equivalent descriptions of these same aspects of life about 25 years ago. To these two sets of data will be added a comparison per aspect and an enumeration of factors behind the changes, for better or for worse.

Visualize it as a common reality among this country's barangays within the next half-decade. It can really be done, and done well, to achieve the Filipino people’s effective teamwork and elegant harmony in every local community, for the betterment of our lives! And it shall have all started in the initiating pilot barangays within the remaining two weeks of the ongoing 'Pistahang Kamalaysayan-2.'