Introduction

The Asian Division of the Library of Congress has compiled this bibliography consisting of approximately 5,000 records of monographs about the Philippines in all languages held by the Library of Congress. This online bibliography covers the period 1988 through 1998 and updates the printed Philippine Holdings in the Library of Congress - 1960-1987 published by the Library in 1993. The compilation of this bibliography is an ongoing process; hence, additional entries are added as they become available. The bibliographic entries are all extracted from the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Since the records found in the catalog are essentially bibliographic records, they have been modified and adapted for use in the Philippine Bibliography. This is most noticeable in the choice of the main entry and in the punctuation style.

The most significant feature of the bibliography are the subject terms added to the records to enhance the value of the bibliography to users. Additional entry points are also provided through the title, author, and name browse lists. The subject browse list basically comprises Library of Congress Subject Headings with some modifications. The title browse list contains titles of works that may appear in full, if short, or in abbreviated form, if long. The author browse list contains the names of persons or corporate bodies not only responsible for the creation of a work but also treated as a subject of a work. For those interested in retrieving the bibliographic records from the Library of Congress Online Catalog, the LC Control Number is provided in each entry to facilitate access through the online catalog.

This bibliography is not annotated. It is hoped that the comprehensive nature of the bibliography, along with its classified arrangements, will make up for the lack of anotations. Items are arranged by category and sub-category which can be easily browsed. In addition, one may browse title, author, or subject.

In addition to these browse capabilities, the bibliography can be searched by keyword(s). Seach results are presented in order by relevance to search items entered by the user.

Objective

This bibliography was created to accomplish the two-fold objective of providing reference and is also an acquisitions tool. For this reason, the scope is inevitably comprehensive, though by no means exhaustive.

Acknowledgments

The Asian Division wishes to acknowledge, with appreciation, the technical support of Anton Pierce and Ardith Bausenbach of the Automation Planning and Liaison Office (APLO) and Barak Stussman of Information Technology Services (ITS), without whose expertise this project would not have come to a successful fruition. Special thanks to Elizabeth Miller, Network Development and MARC Standards Office (LS/OPS/NDMSO), for Web page and user interface design as well as overall technical and editorial guidance.

A. Kohar Rony
Southeast Asia Area Specialist

John A.Reyes
Philippine Specialist