Jack Cabangal: A Librarian In a Making
By
Melchor F. Cichon
November 28, 2012
"I
think librarianship here in the Philippines is not yet appreciated and it is
still unknown to a lot of people."
This
is the answer of Jack Cabangal, the Chief Librarian/Archivist of the
College of St. John-Roxas.
Jack
was born in Leon, Iloilo on March 4, 1991, where she graduated with honors in
her grade schools. She continued her education at Leon National High
School.
After
high school, she enrolled at Central Philippines University where she graduated
with a degree of Bachelor of Library Science and Information Science Batch
2011. Immediately after finishing her college degree, she worked as
Assistant Librarian at College of St. John-Roxas. The following year, she
became the Chief Librarian/Archivist of the same college until today.
When
I asked her why she took library science, she told me: “Actually, Sir,
library science is not my first choice. I had no choice, actually. Since my aunt
was supporting my studies, I had no choice but to follow her wishes.”
Eventually,
Jack started to love the profession. She however feels that librarians are
being paid less. She believes that librarians should be paid higher because
librarians play an important role in any academic institution.
Comparatively
speaking, the initial salary of a newly licensed librarian is between P14,000
to P20,000 a month. This is even much higher than the salaries being received
by most nurses in the Philippines today.
We
know that librarians make the lives of the students, faculty and researcher s
easier by providing them adequate and up-to-date reading materials in the shortest
time possible. In addition, there are
some librarians who serve as thesis advisers. They also help advertise their
respective institution through their fast and efficient services.
Jack said
that if only our people will recognize the importance of the librarians in
helping develop the potentials of our students, then a lot of our parents will
encourage their children to take up library science as one of the options in
taking up a college degree. Unfortunately, until now many of our high school
students and their parents are not aware that there is such a degree as
Bachelor of Library and Information Science. That is also one of the reasons
why our country is not producing enough library science graduates. Because of
this, hundreds of our elementary, high school and college libraries do not have
librarians in their respective libraries. As a result, many of the books,
magazines, and other library materials are not properly cataloged or indexed.
The worst thing to happen is the absence of catalog.
The
internet is of course a very valuable source of information to our students.
But many students do not know the websites that are considered reliable. They are
mostly confined to the popular websites as provided by Yahoo and Google search
engines. That is where the skills and
talents of the librarians come in. In fact many college students are not
knowledgeable in making their bibliographies or citations for their term
papers. That is also another aspect wherein the librarians can help our
students develop their research capabilities.
Jack
is still young, but her perceptions on librarianship need deeper analysis.
