The sad thing about our library books

Title

Creator

Cabanatan, Frank

Language

English

Year

1966

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Fulltext

COMPLAINTS DEPARTMENT by Frank Cabanatan COMMERCE IV The student’s quest for knowledge through the recognition of the value of reading books is markedly manifested by the endless signatures on book cards with “B’s”, i.e., books that can be borrowed for one week. This conveys to us that such search for wider knowledge on this spiritual as well as material world is unlimited. These books unfortunately are food for the imagination only or they are generally fiction books whose covers are enmeshed with dusts and as old as the time itself. I only regret that reference books can be read for one restless hour renewable only when no one is waiting for the book. Can a book be read for one hour only? To read fast is to destroy comprehension. Every person of normal intelligence has to concentrate when he reads to be able to understand what he reads. To limit reference books to a period of one hour is downright cruelty and damaging and disgusting to the poor slow reader. Why can’t reference books be borrowed for the full 24 hours? Does it imply lack of confidence among the students? Do thieves reside in this university? To answer these questions in the affirmative is to discredit the value or role of our guidance counselors or teachers. The U.S.I.S. Library, which lends books for two weeks to persons whose residential addresses they place on their application may be false, reports that very few books are lost in a given year. If the U.S.I.S. Library can trust people of questioned or doubtful integrity and dignity but incurs little lose of books, why can’t the USC librarian bestow trust and confidence to its students, who are reputed to be the most behaved and well disciplined students in Cebu, and let them borrow books for at least one day to afford students sufficient time to read the book? Three weeks after the semester began, being an undergraduate student, I applied for a blue card at the Graduate Section Library so that I may be able to avail of the books not found in the Main Library. But the Graduate Section librarian refused to issue the blue card. Her reasons: I am a Commerce student and they give preference to AB students or those majoring English. This is academic discrimination or a mortal sin in liberal education. I think it is time to institute new policies governing the use of books, the mainstay of education, so that students may be able to make use of them. A free and extensive use of books affects greatly the intellectual cultivation of the students’ faculties. Aug.-Sept., 1966 THE CAROLINIAN Page Eleven

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