The R166-million Web portal, located a www.elib.gov.ph, has a collection of more than 800,000 bibliograhic records consisting of more than 25 million pages of local and international materials, 29,000 full text journals, and 15,000 theses and dissertations. The formal launch was held at the ground floor lobby of National Library of the Philippines at T.M. Kalaw in Manila last April 19. Sen. Ramon B. Magsaysay Jr., a long-time IT advocate in the Senate, graced the event along with CICT chair Virgilio Pena and DOST Undersecretary Fortunato T. dela Pena.
The e-library is a joint undertaking of the Department of Agriculture, Commission on Higher Education, Department of Science and Technology (DOST), the National Library, and the University of the Philippines (UP).
The portal was conceptualized in mid-2003 by DOST’s dela Peña and in December of that same year, it gained the approval of the Information Technology and E-Commerce Council (ITECC), now Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT).
It was one of the 11 government projects approved under the ITECC’s EGovernment Fund. Heads of the participating agencies convened and formally signed the memorandum of agreement on February 4, 2004.
In a statement, proponents said the project aims to enrich local content in digital format for community and global access and provide library and information services network to academic and government institutions.
"The Philippine eLib also seeks to promote and accelerate the exchange of knowledge resources among various sectors of society, which includes regional and international users… It will also preserve the country’s cultural heritage through digitization of Filipiniana materials, photos, maps and others," it added.
To keep the project sustainable, membership fees are charged to those who want to access the portal.
Currently, it has a total of 230 members.
The members are composed of partners (content builders — free of charge), corporate subscribers, individual subscribers (who have paid subscription fees for a limited period of time), prepaid card users (users who log in to the portal using prepaid card accounts), and guest users (unpaid subscribers who can search the database and download fulltext contents upon payment to the Philippine e-Lib).
Autor: Melvin G. Calimag
Quelle: The Manila Bulletin, 24.04.2005
