Learn about your heritage through Filipiniana.net

Learn more about your Filipino heritage through the online portal www.filipiniana.net, which was recently launched during the Asian Historians Conference held mid-November.

According to its presentation and official website, Filipiniana.net is a research portal on the Philippines that gathers and disseminates arcane, unpublished or out-of-print materials in English, Spanish or Filipino languages. “Its main goal is to popularize knowledge on the Philippines dispassionately,” said the publishers.

Through the portal, “Filipinists” and scholars will have access to primary content sources and online links, in an easy, organized and intelligible way.

The website aspires to be the premier online research central on the Philippines. It combines its own online resources of full-text research materials with a portal linking all the key resources of Philippine history, art and culture. Its main resources are a master electronic archive, online search facility, knowledge maps, forums, blogs, electronic directories, virtual tertulias, an e-scholars’ notebook, and an e-journal gathering the best work of Philippine scholars.

Filipiniana.net follows the worldwide consortium—w3c.org—recommendations for universal and transparent web interoperability as well as open and non-proprietary standards. “It subscribes to the UNESCO vision of empowering people by democratizing access to information and knowledge through free flow of ideas in words and images,” said the website.

NMI Council for the Humanities chair Herman T. Guerrero witnessed the launching and presentation of the website last month at the conference in Intercontinental Hotel in Manila, Philippines. He said he was impressed with the efforts of the historians to centralize a means for research and archive about the Philippine heritage.

Filipiniana.net’s vision is to be an electronic publishing leader, a primary partner in open, free and scholarly research.

The team behind the success of the website includes: Gus Vibal, publisher; Carlos Madrid, editor-in-chief; Esther Pacheco, research and editorial consultant; Grace Estela C. Mateo, editor; Raymond Arthur Abejo, editor; Jaime Marco, European delegate; Jose Lloyd Espiritu, technology consultant; Alfred Ursua, managing editor; and Richard Grimaldo, webmaster, among other staff.