Exploring Lopez Museum & Library

Last September 20, 2011, LIS 260 class together with our professor, Ms. Sharon Esposo, went to the Lopez Museum & Library for a tour and to observe the digitization process of the museum and library’s vast collection and to evaluate their Information Retrieval System.

The Lopez Museum & Library was opened in 1960. The museum houses large and rare collections of Filipiniana books, manuscripts, maps, artifacts and paintings of famous Filipino artists like Juan Luna and Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo.

Upon arriving at the Lopez Museum, we were accommodated by the head librarian, Ms. Mercy Servida. She took us for a tour of the library and allowed us to observe how they digitize materials. We’ve learned that scanning and microfilming the materials are some of the processes in digitization. The library is outsourcing the personnel for their digitization project. They do the scanning, microfilming, and even the indexing of finished materials.

After observing the digitization processes, Ms. Servida showed us some rare collections that they have preserved like the photo album of Rizal and rare books. She also shared with us the documentation of photographic treatment on a book. I’ve learned that the processes in treating the books are: de-acidification, re-binding, consolidation of each leaf, fill-in holes and loses, lining with RK-0, and attached acid free barrier on the book box. Also, Ms. Servida also presented some samples of how a book looks like before and after touching the object. All the preserved rare books are kept in an acid-free box while the digitized materials are stored in their server.

Ms. Servida also presented the library system that they have. They used Alchemy and now transferring to other database, to search all the digitized materials. We also tried to search on their database. Admittedly, the library has many collections but, upon searching on their database, I found out that the recall is high and the precision is low. I think, the reason for this kind of result is on the issue of indexing. The library has only two licensed librarian and two to three library staff. They rely on outsourced personnel for the indexing task. However, the personnel have no background in library and information science. Because of the observation, I’ve recommended that the library should hire a professional librarian that will be assigned to do the indexing.

Before we ended the day, the class went to grab a snack at Yellow Cab.  Besides the slices of pizzas and cans of colas, we also shared each other’s experiences and things we’ve learned from visiting the Lopez Museum & Library. Our class definitely enjoyed the tour and looking forward to our next library tour at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) Library in Los Baños, Laguna.