I was in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia for a week to deliver and country report on the information literacy efforts in the country and to participate in a workshop to come up with information literacy modules for Malaysia. The International Workshop on Information Literacy (IWIL) 2006 was held at the Shah Village Hotel, PJ from June 7 to 13. The workshop, organized by the Faculty of Information Management of the Universiti Teknologi MARA, International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) Action for Development through Libraries Programme (ALP), the Librarians Association of Malaysia, and the Ministry of Education’s Educational Technology Division, was the third leg of an annual workshop on information literacy in the Asian region.

I had nothing much to report on in terms of information literacy in the Philippines because there is nothing much to report in terms of government policy because there is no policy to speak of in the first place. Information literacy instruction would be the last thing to occupy the time of our education policy makers because they have to resolve basic issues like shortage of classrooms, teachers, facilities, and resources.

I did, however, discuss private sector led initiatives in promoting information literacy in the country. There is the IFLA and UNESCO funded training workshops for public school librarians in the QUezon City district and of course GILAS.

The IFLA/Unesco study has yet to produce tangible results and despite the availability of support, the concerned public school librarians are nowehere near the implementation of an information literacy program. As for GILAS, they’re still busy providing PCs and Internet access to public high schools in the country.

But really, I don’t want to bore you with all the academic stuff we did during the workshop. On the other hand, an international workshop like this provides time for tours of facilities. After all of the foreign participants have presented their country reports, we went to the country’s administrative center at Putra Jaya, a 30 minute drive from Petaling Jaya.

Rashida, IFLA’s Regional representative, who was seating beside me in the bus, told me that Putra Jaya’s bridges are replicas of famous bridges in the world. True enough I saw a mini-San Francisco bridge and several others whose origins are European. There was this particular bridge that stood out from the rest which looked like a harp from afar.

She also told me that a lot of planning went into Putra Jaya such that the building should compliment one another. The landscaping is noteworthy as well as the street lights which are in themselves works of art. Each major street has a different street light design. I felt silly taking photos of the street lights but I just found them so attractive that when my camera phone’s battery ran out I felt so bad.

Our destination at Putra Jaya was the Perdana Leadership Foundation Library which is the equivalent of a presidential library. Launched in 2003, the Perdana Library collects, develops, disseminates the intellectual legacies of Malaysia’s four prime ministers from Tun Abul Rahman to Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, and promotes global understanding and intellectual exchange.

We were ushered into their mini-theatre and it was impressive. The seats were very comfortable and automatically reclines, has digital surround speakers, and the LCD projector

After a brief video presentation on the legacy of Malaysia’s prime ministers, we toured the memorabilia exhibit at the lobby and found this very interesting fibre optic street light prototype which was a gift to Dr. Mahathir from Inotec Holdings. I asked one of the committee members to translate the description for me and was told that it was an R&D product of the Science, Technology and Environment Ministry using raw materials from Malaysia, Europe and China. Fibre optic streetlight has many advantages like reducing electricity consumption by 70% and is environment-friendly because it has no radiation and does not generate heat. It is expected that the new technology will be used in 2020. The bulb changes colors in a cycle of 2-3 seconds from white, to blue, to yellow, to red, and then to green.

More next week.

(For feedback, comments, suggestions e-mail me at openingpagemb@yahoo.com)

Tell us what you think. Send your comments about this article to MB<space>Views<space>name<space>comments and send it to 2269 for Globe and Sun or to 8369 for Smart subscribers.