Central Philippine University (CPU) launched on Monday, February 15 the BAHÁNDÌAN Institutional Repository. This university repository provides access to the research and publication output of faculty, staff, students, and partner institutions who are conducting collaborative research with CPU.
Bahandian is the first academic repository of its kind in the Visayas and the second institutional repository in Region 6. It is primarily for the management, dissemination, and preservation of digital materials that represent the scholarly work of the Centralian academic community.
Dr. Irving Domingo L. Rio, CPU Vice President for Academic Affairs, said that BAHÁNDÌAN can help the University in making research and scholarly output more visible to the global research community.
“CPU digital repository provides the opportunity to create a central virtual place into which faculty members and students can deposit their scholarly work,” said Rio. “We want the research output of faculty to be utilized by other researchers, thus generating citations.”
Paolo C. Cabanero, Educational Supervisor II of CHED Regional Office 6, lauded the launching of Bahandian as a significant milestone for the institution in its transition to flexible learning.
“When various digital materials are put together, digital content has the potential the greatest intellectual capital of the institution. With this, I sincerely commend CPU for this innovation,” said Cabanero.
Dr. Reysa Alenzuela, Professor at CPU School of Graduate Studies and Consultant on Research and Publication, said that the Bahandian project is a “memory treasure in itself.”
“We did our best to use systems and standards we can embed and integrate to make the platform as scholarly as possible. And I am proud to say that we are now also visible in Google Scholar,” Alenzuela revealed.
Currently, journal publications of the university such as Patubas and Scientia et Fides are in the collection. Journal publications, theses, and dissertations of students and faculty are also prioritized. To protect copyright, only abstracts for research works produced from 1971 to 2021 are available. For those produced from 1970 and below, full text will be provided. Other CPU-related research publications such as books, reports, manuals, will also be added to the digital collection.
BAHÁNDÌAN: the name and logo
“Bahándìan” is a Hiligaynon term for a container of treasure. This name was chosen as the repository symbolizes a ‘treasure trove’ of valuable scholarly works of the institution. It will provide open, online access to the University’s research and scholarship, to preserve these works for future generations, to promote new models of scholarly communication, and to help deepen community understanding of the value of higher education.
The logo is a pearl encased in a shell with the Baybayin characters for Bahándìan. This is to symbolize the ‘treasure’ of knowledge held in the repository.
BAHÁNDÌAN is maintained and managed by the CPU Henry Luce III Library
The Henry Luce III Library of CPU is managing the online repository. Librarians and staff of the library are digitizing the materials for Bahandian. As of this writing, there are around 300 documents in the repository. More are being digitized and added to the collection daily.
Librarians and experts from the Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center Aquaculture Department (SEAFDEC/AQD) Library and Data Bank in Tigbauan, Iloilo provided technical support and training for CPU Henry Luce III librarians and staff to help establish the repository.
BAHÁNDÌAN officially launched on February 15, 2021 in the Rose Memorial Auditorium of Central Philippine University. The event was also streamed on Facebook Live via the University’s official social media pages.
This is one of the CPU Henry Luce III Library’s initiatives in response to the pandemic, the shift to online learning, the growing need for online resources and the promotion of a culture of research in the university. In June 2020, the library launched Bertha, the virtual library assistant, to great success.
You may access the repository at https://repository.cpu.edu.ph/. For more information about the CPU Henry Luce III Library and services, visit their website at https://library.cpu.edu.ph.
