Lifting Book Duties

In a previous post about the The Great Book Blockade of 2009, I mentioned the silence that pervaded Filipino librarians on this side of the issue. While it is good to note that Filipino blograrians were up in arms to blog about TGBB 2009 in their individual capacity, there was no collective voice from professional associations or teachers of LIS to rally or petition the lifting of book duties. Unless, of course, I have not been looking at the right places. I can be wrong.

iRead2 put a fullstop on my musings through this post --

Now even if the duties were scrapped the common man would not be able still to get or even buy a book. There is still a need to develop other avenues by which everyone can avail of the book and one of this is develop our public library system. Promote and develop them.

Not everyone can afford to buy a book. Not everyone has a credit line to buy a book. This is where or this where a library, public or otherwise can fill the gap.

I'd like to think that most Filipino librarians are battling their own professional issues and problems that to make a noise on the TGBB is just too much to do for now. I would like to think that somewhere out there, Filipino Librarians are quietly transforming their libraries into places where the public can freely access information from printed and online media.