Six scores and three years ago, a man with a vision and mission on Philippine librarianship was born in Barasoain, Malolos, Bulacan. In 1918, he wrote an article in The Citizen entitled “Is Librarianship a Profession?” In the same year when the Alonso Act was passed, he was one of the seven government pensionados sent to the United States to further their studies in library science and bibliography. Two years after his return, he became Assistant Librarian at the University of the Philippines Department of Library Science (predecessor of the U.P. Institute of Library Science) under the leadership of Miss Mary K. Polk. When Miss Polk died in 1924, he took over. He was also one of the thirty-three founders of the Philippine Library Association (PLA) in 1923 wherein he became president several times. He attended IFLA when it was organized in 1929 and made PLA an affiliate member, thus putting the country in the map of international librarianship. He was also responsible in the construction of the U.P. library buildings: the pre-war Rizal Hall in Ermita, Manila and the post-war Gonzalez Hall in Diliman, Quezon City.\Because of his pioneering work and unselfish commitment and dedication to the library profession for almost half a century, the U.P. Library Science Alumni Association conferred to Prof. Gabriel A. Bernardo the title “Doyen of Filipino Librarians” in 1957. Let us not forget his definition of how to be a professional librarian. The true professional librarian must have all his being properly disciplined. The hand representing technical skill; the head representing the ‘well ordered mind, the thinker who plans, organizes and administers the proper utilization of materials and human resources of his library’; and the heart, which he equates to ‘his humaneness, his ethical relations not only with his public but with his superiors, equals and subordinates’.
Posted on: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 11:38:28 +0000
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