National Book Week 2018 Contests and Competitions

The Philippines celebrates two library and bookish events this month namely, the National Book Week (NBW) headed by the Philippine Librarians Association Inc (PLAI) and the Library and Information Services (LIS) Month as organized by the National Library of the Philippines (NLP). Yes, it is a very busy month for Filipino Librarians since all regional librarians association, public libraries, school and academic libraries are bent on organizing events, activities and projects on the occassions mentioned above.

It doesn’t end there.

The PLAI Congress is scheduled on November 20-23, 2018. If Filipino librarians are not affected by the senate’s decision to repeal the Continuing Professional Development Law, expect the attendance to double up from last year’s 900 plus participants. As dictated by tradition, a PLAI assembly usually takes place on November 30 as culminating event.

These celebrations are peppered with contests and competitions in between the days and weeks of stress and excitement. The PLAI, for one, has put together several contests for young people to partake in. This year’s NBW Chair, Darrel Marco, led the NBW committee in organizing an essay contest, a graphic novel contest, a poster making contest and a Readers Theatre contest. These competitions are meant to develop skills in the communication arts, visual arts and the sciences. This year’s theme, Connected Actions, Collective Vision: Libraries Transforming Lives, is the focal point to which the entries in the essay, graphic novel and poster contests are based upon.

Apparently, I was invited as judge of the essay writing competition. This is my first time to judge in the contest. Having been invited as judge in previous storytelling competitions of the NBW, I know what to expect. I have written in the blog my insights and previous experiences as judge in the NBW contests so, expect that I will do the same for this year. That’s one post I hope you will be waiting for in the next few days because the entries in the essay contests are evidences of the country’s collective thought process, pedagogy and teaching practices in literacy skills development, as well as, the untapped potential of librarians as agent of change, collaboration and community building.

Judges of all three contests, essay, graphic novel and poster making gather for a photo op. 

As the judging of the three contests was done simultaneously, we noticed patterns and similarities that bothered and moved us to think of doing more for the book industry and the LIS profession.