Philippine eLibrary Project  National Library of the Philippines

The Philippine eLibrary Project is one of the eleven government funded projects through the Information Technology and E-Commerce Council (ITECC) now Commission on Information and Communication Technology (CICT). 

In December, 2003 the Project Proposal gained the approval of the Council with a total budget is 166,770,000 million. The Philippine eLib is a collaborative project of Commission on Higher Education CHED), Department of Agriculture (DA), Department of Science and Technology (DOST), The National Library of the Philippines (TNL) and University of the Philippines (UP). 

Organizational structure includes Steering Committee which is composed of executives from each agencies that sets the policies and decisions for the Project.  The National Library is the Project Management Office (PMO) with the Director as the Project Manager.

The Philippine eLib is the country's first public electronic library.  It has the most exclusive and up-to-date information about the Philippines and other related resources.  Philippine eLib at present holds a collection of more than 800,000 bibliographic records, 25 million pages of digitized Philippine materials such as rare books, serials, government publication, maps, photos and online databases of 29,000 full-text journals.

Users can log on and search for materials or sign up as a member and gain access to more resources.  The Philippine eLib is a national information resource-sharing consortium composed of the aforementioned five agencies.

The Philippine eLib is the most ambitious project because it pools together the writings and distinctive materials of the participating agencies and their sub-agencies for nationwide use.  One of the aims of the consortium is to share this national heritage materials with other state libraries and universities in the Philippines as well as the farmer and fisherfolk.

As the first public electronic library in the country, Philippine eLib is seen to represent the evolving culture and modernity of the Philippines.  Accordingly, the logo chosen for Philippine eLib also stands for nationalism in the new millennium.  The main colors used in the logo are red, blue and yellow.  These are the primary colors of the nation's flag, which represents the values of the Filipinos as individuals, and as a nation.  The image of the sun and its rays represent Philippine eLib and the five government agencies that conceptualized it.  Like the rays these institutions are the primary movers behind Philippine eLib.  They serve as link between the ordinary people and the collective.

The Project offers: *foreign databases, *local databases of partners, *Filipiniana theses and dissertations, books, periodicals/magazines, documents * bibliographic and full text records * online public access catalog (OPAC), * union catalog of partners, *selective dissemination of information, * reproduction of services (print, microfilm, CD).

It has six components which are interrelated. A team leader is appointed to each component. Each participating agency is represented in the six components. All team leaders are constituted into a Project Management Committee (PMC) headed by the Project Manager.

The Project is composed of the following components: 

• Network Team which determines the network requirements of the Project, and how the existing information infrastructure of the participants can support the Project, determine each hardware requirements of the Project, 
• Portal System which determine the system requirements of the portal system, the middleware, the payment gateway, the user management system, and all such software requirements to enable the Project to deliver the intended products and services and formulate the bid technical specifications of this component of the Project 
• Digitization which determines and prioritize the holdings (22 million+) that need to be digitized, formulate the bid technical specifications of this component of the Project 
• Collections Development which determines the collection requirements in all formats with emphasis on e-library resources, formulate the technical specifications of this component of the Project and estimate On-Line subscriptions: PhP 16 million
• Business Systems formulates the business model for the products and services envisioned by the Project, determine the cost and revenue sharing of the products and services
• Training Team coordinates the training needs of the Project and conducts orientations/workshops for the Project teams

The objectives are: provide a Portal that contains a union catalog of the holdings of the parties and provide links to these resources, * digitize resources which are produced locally such as, but not limited to, theses and dissertations, scholarly publications in the humanities, social sciences and science and technology, and materials that represent the country’s cultural heritage*, share subscription of online databases and make these available to a wider audience, * facilitate access to these resources, particularly to state universities and colleges (SUCs) and the Filipino citizen in general and * establish a mechanism of income generate to sustain the Project.

Finally, Philippine eLib benefits includes access to combined library resources/holdings of the participating libraries, access to expensive electronic databases by the SUCs at a lower cost, preservation of the cultural heritage through digitization of Filipiniana materials, photos, maps, etc., opportunity to network Philippine materials, research, and other cultural materials into a single portal and access by the citizenry because the project leverages the existing network of each participating agency.