Visit your National Library and Historical Commission
Group portrait of the 19th century Ilustrados at the NHCP.
We’re starting our own publishing imprint this year. Yesterday our friend and book designer Ige accompanied us to the National Library of the Philippines on T.M. Kalaw in Manila to get the ISBNs (International Standard Book Numbers) for our first two books.
When people describe their experience of getting permits and other documents from government agencies, their accounts range from the aggravating to the Kafkaesque. Ige told us that the process of securing an ISBN would take all of 20 minutes.
It took 15 minutes. The staff was brisk and efficient, and she patiently pointed out the errors on our application form.
Have you been to the National Library? The building is being retrofitted, but the library is open to the public from 8am to 7pm, Mondays through Saturdays. Get a library card and hang out there. There’s something about sitting in a big room with high ceilings, surrounded by bookshelves, that makes you want to write.
For information on ISBN registration, library collections, readers’ cards and others, visit the National Library website.
Afterwards we went next door to the National Historical Commission to check out their publications.
Someone must have borrowed our copy of The Memoirs of Artemio Ricarte, the Revolutionary general known as El Vibora and one of the most intriguing characters of his era. (He always referred to himself in the third person, hmmm.) We found this more recent edition of the memoirs, selling for Php200.
The NHCP also published Apolinario Mabini’s La Revolucion Filipina, his account of the Philippine Revolution of 1898. There are so many questions we want to ask Apolinario Mabini, not the least of which is ‘How do you feel about being called The Sublime Paralytic?’ Seriously, the man is a hero, and that’s his honorific?
The NHCP edition of La Revolucion Filipina retails for Php160. Mr. Willy Bas of the publications office reminded us that on July 23 we celebrate Mabini’s 150th birthday. He gave us a copy of ‘Mabini’s Letters to the President’—the text of a lecture by Adrian Cristobal, and a postcard of the Mabini Shrine in Pandacan. We’re ashamed to admit that we’ve never been to the Mabini Shrine or the Nakpil-Bautista house in Quiapo where Gregoria de Jesus-Bonifacio-Nakpil lived, and we have no memory of a trip to the Rizal house in Calamba when we were little.
The full list of NHCP publications is here. Plenty of interesting titles, including Angry days in Mindanao: The Philippine revolution and the war against the U.S. in East and Northeast Mindanao, 1897-1908; Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas; The Diary of a French Officer on the War in the Philippines; and The Cattle Caravans of Ancient Caboloan.
Our mission accomplished, we introduced Ige to one of our favorite spots in the city of Manila, the Sky Deck of the Bayleaf Hotel in Intramuros. We had coffee and their eevil ensaymada pudding while enjoying the cold air,
the amazing views,
and the glorious sunset.
We bitch constantly about Manila, but it is beautiful if you know where to look.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
January 17th, 2014 at 11:39
Your Grace, the Mabini Shrine is now located inside the PUP campus, Sta. Mesa, Manila. It’s been there since 2007, Your Grace.