Iloilo City Librarians craft mother tongue books

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Fifty librarians were trained to create books in dialect by the National Library of the Philippines (NLP) during a Training Workshop on the Development of Children’s Books in Mother Tongue at City Hall Penthouse May 15-17.

The initiative was conducted for the purpose of helping subject teachers to produce books in order to fill the scarce resources in K to 12.

Iloilo City Public Library head Marion Aguirre said the outputs of participants will be compiled, produced, and distributed to various libraries here.

“This is very significant because we are teaching mother tongue to our pupils but due to the scarcity of mother tongue books, we only have limited materials in schools as well as in libraries,” Aguirre said.

The training was funded by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) with the help of NLP.

“Since NCCA witnessed the good results of the project, hopefully, this will be given enough budget and will continue for the next years to come,” said Flordeliza T. Quiñones, assistant chief of NLP’s Reference Division.

“We also wanted to encourage the private schools in Iloilo and make them aware and I think they will follow this program,” she added.
Author Dr. Luis Gatmaitan shared his expertise in writing for children.

Irma F. Saligumba, Health and Projects Coordinator of Molave Development Foundation Inc., Program Manager of Beyond Access Philippines, taught the participants about Bloom Software which they will be using in producing the books.

Melanie Ramirez, Librarian III of NLP’s Reference Division, also taught the participants about interactive storytelling. (Roger Paul Timothy l. Lacuarta, Blessy Kaye Mallorca & Cherry Patriarca/Iloilo City PIO)

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