The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
In an effort to share with the world the priceless collections that have “nourished the minds of countless generations of Filipino students,” the University of Santo Tomas (UST) and UnionBank of the Philippines unveiled the school’s massive, multivolume catalogues of rare books and periodicals at the Edsa Shangri-La hotel in Mandaluyong City on May 5.
UST Rector Fr. Herminio V. Dagohoy of the Order of Preachers (O.P.) and UnionBank CEO and Chairman Dr. Justo A. Ortiz led the public presentation of this herculean project, titled Semper Lumina (Always the Light). It boasts of the vast treasures of the UST Miguel de Benavides Library and the Archivo de Santo Tomas.
This project is a “follow-through” of Lumina Pandit (Spreading the Light), an international exhibition of the rich collection of Asia’s oldest university with accompanying two-volume catalogues showing such holdings.
Semper Lumina is made up of a six-volume catalogue of rare publications, a two-volume catalogue of the UST Archives, and the Heritage digital library.
“The collection of rare books of the UST Library is an eloquent witness to the role of this institution in nurturing the values that have contributed to the birth and growth of this nation,” wrote the catalogues’ general editor and UST Prefect of Libraries Fr. Angel Aparicio, O.P., in the Volume 1 prologue.
Volumes 1 to 3 feature catalogues of rare books housed at the UST Heritage Library section that date between 1492 and 1900, while Volume 4 covers rare Filipiniana periodicals up to 1945.
Among the 466 books published between 1492 and 1600 and included in Volume 1 are Josephus Flavius’ De Bello Judaico (The Jewish War, 1492), Nicolaus Copernicus’ De Revolutionis Orbium Coelestium Libri VI (On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres, Book 6) (1542), and the Biblia Regia Plantin or Polyglot Bible (between 1569 and 1573).
Containing 5,861 entries and presented in three parts, Volume 2 focuses on the collections UST acquired between the 17th and 19th centuries, and used as textbooks by the university. One of the books in the volume is Pope Leo the Great’s Opera Omnia (1614). This volume is one of the catalogues of Lumina Pandit II.
Volume 3 showcases the UST Filipiniana rare collection, which is considered one of the richest of its kind in the Philippines. Publications include the first edition of Dr. José P. Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere (Touch Me Not), one of three original copies preserved by UST.
Rare Filipiniana periodicals, like La Solidaridad and La Independencia, are featured in Volume 4.
Meanwhile, a separate two-volume catalogue for the collection of the UST Archives (becerros, folletos, and libros) were also unveiled, with archivist and respected Philippine church art and architecture historian Prof. Regalado Trota José as editor.
Documents included in the catalogue are the Foundation Act of 1611; Apolinario Mabini’s 1898 Decalogo, copy of Rizal’s poem Mi Ultimo Adios (My Last Farewell); and documents in baybayin (1623), recently declared National Historical Treasures by the National Archives.
Digitized versions of books and periodicals from the UST library (834,000 pages) may be accessed through the UST Digital Library (digilib.ust.edu.ph). A total of 1.5 million pages have been scanned, and will be uploaded on the website.
Asia’s only pontifical university traces its roots to the donation by Msgr. Miguel de Benavides, O.P., second archbishop of Manila and founder of UST, of his personal library collections to the school.