Year End Report

Filipiniana.net was finally launched on the web last September 27, 2006 and it is now available for public access 24/7. Filipiniana.net is a research portal that concentrates on Philippine studies.It will serve researchers, librarians and scholars all over the world to find documents that pertains to the Philippines. In other words, It will be the central repository of rare images and documents that can be search to our database through the internet. Thus, giving the tagline "Philippine studies at your fingertips."

The Brain and heart of Filipiniana.net

The database of processed documents and digitized images is the core product of Filipiniana.net. It provides wide arcane of scholarly researched materials from the 15th century to contemporary period. Filipiniana.net had digitized historical documents and rare photographs that are hardly seen in our regular history textbooks. All of these comprises the brain and heart FIlipiniana.net and called it the "Digital Library" or DigiLib.

The database offers searching capabilities similar to other online libraries but has broader and wider approach in sorting, examining and deliver research materials. One of its functions is the "Comprehensive Search" which offers in-depth combination and research mechanism that can be pre-selected by the user itself e.g. author, title, date of publications, genre and more.

With these features, It gives information the fastest way right infront of the users' desktop and will allow them to browse more on its categories. Thesaurus was also provided to facilitates the user to its related words or terms that matches with their queries, Thus helping them to give instant result in a single click of a mouse.

Why Filipiniana.net is Unique

FIlipiniana.net is the 4th digital library to emerge in the Philippines. Its competitors are the Philippine's E-Library, Ayala's Filipinas Heritage Library and the Project Gutenberg and all of them has different levels of presenting information to its users. Some of them are free and some information can be retrieve thru subscriptions.

What is unique about Filipiniana.net is that, it offers not just digitizing historical materials but it develops and process documents in an ecclectic model to make it scholarly rich as possible. Meaning to say, there's an editorial processing of documents before it is published online. These are the services Filipiniana.net could offer to the growing demands for Philippine online resources. It was build to facilitate and help students, researchers and anyone who loves the Philippines all the information they can get in an instant.

Aside from these, Filipiniana.net also provides "executive summaries, hyperlinked text and endnotes" to all its processed documents to simplify users navigation and research. The documents are searchable and would allow them to see "highlighted text" of the keyword they searched. Related terms and suggested related documents is also being provided.

On Community Building

Filipiniana.net not only strives to be the leading online publisher and digital library in the country but also it is striving to build a community of users who have interest on Philippine studies. It is trying to attract filipinist, historians, researchers and other people around the globe who has same interest and provide them with facilities wherein they could discuss topics and other similar topics they could share and contribute.

Initially, Filipiniana.net Tech team created the "Blogsphere", a community of bloggers who blog related to Philippine studies. They share their ideas on cetain topic and post it to the blog site for others to read and post their comments. It has also a "Forum", a discussion site for members that discuss different topics that may relate to simple site concern to a more broader historical accounts in the Philippines. As a matter of fact, there's an ongoing debate on a particular topic by the users that make the site more interactive.

So why we build community?. The popularity of Web 2.0 standards makes waves for this technological advances in web publishing wherein the users are the masters of your site. The popularity of blogs, forum and other social networking web tools makes the internet as the most powerful media to cover worldwide audience. Corporate business are tapping these online facilities to spread their press releases, activities, corporate activities and more. Is it because there are a sudden upsurged of online readers who are propelled to this social networking facilities.

Therefore, by integrating these, it would not only generate more users but also it would become a byword to the online community. Thats how Filipiniana.net gain its popularity among its competitors. Through this facility, we can acquire information to our users on what they want and what are their interest. Filipiniana.net can tap these info to build tools for them.

A project in process

As Filipiniana.net continues its development for the masses, We are developing ways to facilitate users to the site with ease of use and functional to their needs and a site that they will love. With the emerging Web 2.0 standard, the site would offer users to "Cite its Source" meaning, they will be provided with instant citation information that they "copy and paste" to their research project or disertations.

With the succesful implementation of "commenting" to our image database, we will also developing and opening our processed documents for user's comments. They can post anything from deep appreciation of the article up to commenting on how these documents should be processed.

Filipiniana.net believes on the power of its users. We are redefining our contents based on their demographic behavior. With the implementation of this new model, users will be the king of our contents and Filipiniana.net is just here to give them the facilities they need.

In the near future, Filipiniana.net Tech Team shall build "tools" for the researchers and students to enable them to create their own folders and thesis making directly thru the site's browser.

Conclusion

Indeed, the users are the ones driving us to this paradigm shift. This is our new model for online publishing and we are expecting to create a wide support to this project.

Filipiniana.net is just a start up and on the verge of its content and community building. The ambitious projects of Filipiniana.net is one of its kind. With the guidance of its passion- driven and visionary founder, Mr. Gus Vibal, the project would emerge as the countries leader in educational research and online publications.

Filipiniana.net is into this bandwagon because it already anticipated the upcoming Web 3.0 standards that would create a paradigm shift to worldwide online users. It would open a new dimension for site interactivity and redefining its way to publish their work online. More users will be online and the sudden 60% growth by 2009 is a big impact for future projects. Most of them are virtual students. This is a concept of distance learning being offered by Universities and Colleges around the world wherein students can use the internet to earn their degrees. And this universities and colleges will be looking for facilities to help their students with their studies of their choosen fields. Therefore, Filipiniana.net is here to help them.

To achieve this, we need support and trust to this nationalistic endeavor. Filipiniana.net could only achieve its goal if it has its financial partner to support and sustain its projects. At present, our founder is building network of prospective supporters from the private and government sectors. Well, we cannot do that overnight, initially we are being backed up by our mother patriarch in publishing, Mrs. Esther Vibal, who also believes that education is a prime mover in putting a country to greateness. As she said "Human knowledge should be shared and become a product for everyone to enjoy".