Former STIMULATE program coordinator Prof. Paul Nieuwenhuysen of Vrije Universitiet Brussel, Belgium led the team of speakers to the two-day seminar on “Scientific & Technological Information Management in Universities and Libraries: an Active Teaching Environment (STIMULATE) held by Philippine Librarians Association Inc.- Cordillera Administrative Region Librarians Council (PLAI-CARLC) and the Benguet State University Library and Information Services (BSULIS) on April 15-16 at the BSU ICT Hall, Library Building 2, and Calajo Restaurant, Km.6, Betag, La Trinidad, Benguet.
The team of Belgian professor educated 56 librarians and information professionals on information management like citation management and analysis, trends in libraries, information discovery, information engineering, cataloging updates, open source and open access softwares, Resource Access and Description, online applications for libraries and online journals. His team was composed of Filipino speakers who are alumni of an international training sponsored by Belgian universities (VLIR) including product demo speakers who have international exposures in their field of specializations.
Success of the said seminar was complimented by a good rating from the evaluation of participants by having no “fair” and “poor” ratings. Out of 56 participants, 18 rated excellent while 38 rated satisfactory.
Meanwhile, in a text message from Aron Esong of Cordillera Career Development College and Betsie dela Cruz of Isabela State University, they were thanking Mr. Lauren Kipaan, PLAI-CARLC President and STIMULATE seminar organizer for coming up with such kind of very stimulating seminar.
“We’re very grateful that we had been a part of the seminar and had acquired a lot of ideas to apply in our libraries”, reads one of the messages.
Similar Facebook chats and timeline posts from the beneficiaries not only from the Cordillera region but also from other regions were received by Mr. Kipaan relaying their appreciations and expressing intentions to attend again similar seminar.
According to Mr. Kipaan , a similar in-house training was conducted in 2010 to all librarians of Benguet State University. He further explained that the purpose is to level up the technological skills of librarians since it is the universal trend and future of information delivery especially to academic institutions.
On the other hand, the seminar was not successful without the following sponsors who lend a hand namely Forefront Book Company, Amatea Educational Systems, CD Books International, Academic Book Sales, iGroup/LibTech, Great Books Trading, Belview Company, Megatext Philippines, Electronic Information Solutions Inc., and Aspen Pharma Philippines.
STIMULATE is a former international three months training started in Vrije Universitiet Brussel, Belgium. Stimulate is now renamed into Lib@web and it is now hosted in University of Antwerpen, Belgium.
