By Carlo Basilio Lorenzo | March 20, 2019
MANILA, PH- “I think, therefore I am”, said of one of the famous philosophers Rene Descartes, therefore I dream of so many future possibilities of a progressive and successful life as it is in my hands as a youth where the hope of our motherland lies, whom our national hero Dr. Jose Rizal once said.
How could I? how could we achieve a productive future that is equated with technical transformations that is so much a way of life now in all its aspects, our libraries included.
Through the years, we have been relying on books and other printed materials for our background knowledge to help us come-up with ideas that are important to our progress. Undeniably, our growth and progress are the result of the relentless hard work of our forebears who recorded their findings in books and other manuscripts. These theoretical facts and records became the bases of present day discoveries of which we are enjoying at large proportions by way of technology and such is the result of now the obvious fast track progress of a more rigid, easy way of doing research works and finding ready answers for any queries under the sun. What of a technically aided library to search and learn and widen knowledge among us students in the quest for a brighter future. The library in the clouds also known as technological library where innovative equipments can be found like internet, the home of online journals and articles, the different gadgets of acquiring information and disseminating it through handy forms of cell phones, tablets, laptops and USBs. The space saving means of storing records through microchips, the book contents like encyclopedias that could be stored and filed in a disk and just put in a computer to read and so on and so forth, as gadgets kept on being discovered and updated. All these compiled in place called an E-Library. And what could be a more fascinating trend of challenging our thoughts to higher thinking but to discover through surfing in an electronic library. All ideas and features that could motivate our fantasies, we could do it all comfortably just by surfing air of clouds of the different networks and applications of the internet- this is the face of a technically progressive library, a technically progressive civilization.
Indeed, the oldest library in the Philippines, the Miguel de Benavides Library of University of Santo Tomas, which holds more than two hundred fifty thousand books and three hundred twenty thousand volumes, both academic and rare tomes, adapted the new way of disseminating ideas and information by using innovative equipment, where articles and journals can be found in Electronic Resources and online data bases. On the other hand, the literary pieces of our forebears are now showcased in the application and website of the library. Virtually, the printed materials and old books wherein fusty by the epoch and era, can now be seen in the colorful and catchy modern screen monitors. The library also uses the new way of cataloging of books by means of organized system of the computer, by encoding the data and flashing it in the library’s website, which truly helps the students to search and grope the books, journals and other printed manuscripts. The Miguel de Benavides Library is truly a proof of the “Library of the clouds” because of its passion and desire to disseminate accurate and genuine information and ideas to its students and scholars, which later on become the catalysts of change of our society. Undeniably, despite of its oldness, the Miguel de Benavides Library is the home of golden treasures of knowledge, foundation of colorful history and the root of affluent beliefs and traditions.
As a student passionate and curious to know and learn, I will make use of these changes productively. I will search, discover and manipulate those gadgets learning devices, but I always will fall into reading. I will still read, therefore I am as Rene Descartes said, to find my way into a bright future enough to enlighten me.
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