Through its Filipiniana collection development project, the Philippine Studies Group at the York Centre for Asian Research has acquired 107 titles for donation to York University Libraries (YUL). This project was part of a grant from the Philippine government to enhance academic and research collaborations between York University and Philippine universities.
“We focused on titles that fell outside YUL’s usual acquisition channels – titles older than five years, from presses without Canadian distribution channels,” said Kenneth Cardenas, a doctoral candidate in the Graduate Program in Geography who co-ordinated the project.
Some highlights of the acquisition include 31 titles from the University of the Philippines Press, 11 from the Ateneo de Manila University Press, five from Anvil Publishing and a full set of the second edition of the Encyclopedia of Philippine Arts – its final print run before shifting to an online-only model.
“We sought to reflect the strengths and interests of York’s Philippine studies community: performing arts; gender, sexuality and women’s studies; economic history and geography; and environmental studies and climate change," said Cardenas. "We also tried to fill some gaps in York’s current collection with titles on social movements, Mindanao, and conflict and reconciliation.”
There was also an attempt to reflect in the acquisitions the unique conditions of knowledge production in the Philippines after the 1986 EDSA Revolution, a series of popular demonstrations in the country, also known as the People Power Revolution.
Other themes captured in this acquisition include: research by non-governmental organizations; public affairs journalism and public scholarship; social movement pamphlets, biographies and memoirs; and defunct presses. These rough categories are meant to aid development efforts of future collections, explained Cardenas.
Collecting these works, said Cardenas, is crucial for maintaining dialogue between research communities within the Philippines and in its diasporas. Some of the best work from this period, he said, might not have been previously available to northern academics because it might have had a limited print run, no distribution outside the Philippines, sparse citations or no international standard book number.
The Philippine Studies Group's new acquisitions have already been cited 6,446 times and counting, according to Google Scholar data, proving there is indeed a demand for this material.
A full list of the newly acquired titles is available in this Google doc.