Short article with no abstract.

A recent study found that only 31% of academic law libraries in the Philippines are prepared to provide a hybrid of face-to-face and online instruction or HyFlex library services and programs in the new normal, and almost 20% cannot support the instructional and learning needs of their institution due to gaps in their basic law collection (Frias & Halcon, 2022). This paper investigates the relationships between the location, type, as well as size of institutions and the preparedness and compliance of their academic law libraries for hybrid learning and the Legal Education Board’s (LEB) standards on library services, programs, as well as collection. Data were collected through a survey questionnaire distributed to participants of the Basic Training for Academic Law Librarians conducted by the Network of Academic Law Librarians, Inc. The results of this study provide a foundation for improvement in library management with specific recommendations to improve the preparedness of these libraries for the new legal education system in the Philippines. The survey was completed by 72 out of 100 academic law librarians, and the data were analyzed using one-way ANOVA and the Brown-Forsythe Test. The results of the study included the following: 1) academic law libraries are generally compliant with LEB standards; 2) academic law libraries from private institutions are more prepared and compliant; and 3) the three categorical variables namely, a) location, b) the type of institution, and c) size of the institution in varying degrees are significant factors in the preparedness and compliance of academic law libraries to support the Philippine legal education system.

This study aims to analyze the paradigm shift in university library circulation services post-COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, this study examines trends in the use of physical collections and evaluates user satisfaction with technology-based circulation services. This study adopts a quantitative approach with a comparative descriptive method. The integrated library system collected secondary data on physical collection borrowing transactions from 2017-2019 (pre-pandemic) and 2022-2024 (post-pandemic). Primary data was collected through a questionnaire distributed to 308 University of Bengkulu Library students. The questionnaire instrument integrates the satisfaction dimensions of the LibQUAL+ and EUCS models to measure user perception. Data analysis was carried out using descriptive statistics and ANOVA tests. The study results show a significant and permanent decline in the use of physical collections post-pandemic. Despite this, the overall level of user satisfaction with circulation services remains high (average 4.11 out of 5), especially in the staff dimensions (Service) and library space (Place). User satisfaction with supporting technologies, such as OPAC, also shows high value, indicating that investment in digital infrastructure is highly appreciated. The ANOVA test showed that demographic factors did not significantly influence user satisfaction. College libraries must reformulate circulation service strategies by adopting a hybrid model that balances physical and digital collections. Recommendations include strengthening the role of libraries as spaces for collaboration and informal learning, and continuous evaluation of technology-based services to improve the overall quality of services.

Short article with no abstract.

Devised by William Dean Howells as a jointly written, serialized novel about a middling American family and edited by Elizabeth Jordan, The Whole Family (1907-1908) has been defined above all by the contention among its twelve authors rather than their collaboration. Scholars have explored the discordant voices within and outside of the novel, including the writers’ outspoken critique of their peers’ differing literary styles, formal and thematic choices as well as the diverging interests of writers, editors, and publishers. Also, the authorial discord has come to represent the American family in crisis at the beginning of the twentieth century, a discord heightened by the diverse individual and gender perspectives that the novel opens up. This study redirects our attention to the text as a collaborative project aimed at the family novel in American modernist literature. By drawing on Mikhail M. Bakhtin’s notion of chronotopicity, it demonstrates that the authors of The Whole Family jointly rework the traditional family idyll into an exhilarating composite family portrait, whose individual chapters experiment with multitudinous spatiotemporal perspectives, individual space-time experiences, and life sequences. At the same time, the chapters in themselves grapple with the tensions resulting from the modernist experience of multiplying time, space, and identity while the American family likewise undergoes major discursive changes.

For Muslims, the future is complicated by the persistence of the past. The Islamophobia of a post-9/11 world constitutes a continuation of the historical colonial suppression of Muslim identities and epistemologies. Islamophobia reproduces old Orientalist narratives that reduce complex Muslim identities into a violent and fanatical “Other” that needs to be contained and silenced. In order to resist such suppression, Muslims must re-possess their identities outside of binary Western ontological frames in which these Islamophobic constructions are rooted. I argue that speculative fiction (sf) provides a means of re-imagining Muslim experiences and identities outside of oppressive binaries. The “absent paradigm” of the SF world has no direct relationship with the empirical world, and this central absence allows writers to introduce difference into familiar narratives, thereby carving out possibilities for alternative identities and futures. Through a reading of Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West (2017), I demonstrate how the absent paradigm of SF can establish aesthetics of discomfort that can unsettle old narratives and stereotypes. I argue that this enables Hamid to redefine Muslim identity in relation to in-betweenness and difference, thus breaking down the opposition between “self” and “other.” In this way, Muslim identity is reframed, paving a way for a hopeful Muslim future.

Short article with no abstract.

This article employs the psychosocial theories of Erik Erikson on identity development to negotiate the growth and learning process of Esperanza Cordero, the young adolescent heroine of Sandra Cisneros’s novel The House on Mango Street (1984). The article not only negotiates the interplay between social and psychological aspects of identity construction but also reads Esperanza’s identity in the light of the relationship between Erikson’s fifth developmental stage (Identity vs. Confusion) and both the preceding stage (Industry vs. Inferiority) as well as the next stage (Intimacy vs. Isolation). As a novel of education and character building, The House on Mango Street manifests a necessary overlap between genre and theme, and thus a preoccupation with learning from the world through interacting variables like sensory perceptions, peer pressure, and direct experiences. The protagonist in this formative novel, being an adolescent in a crucial stage of receiving influences, seeks knowledge about the external world as well as her identity. Feelings of shame and non-belonging govern her thoughts about the house on Mango Street. Thus, Cisneros uses the house on Mango Street as a sustained trope for identity construction and personality growth. Ultimately, Esperanza finds her identity as an emerging artist (a poet and writer); and this gives her inner peace, freedom, and emotional stability to decide to come back and help other women in her community. Moreover, it is when she finds a “house” of her own within her heart she can overcome her anxieties and come to terms with her shabby neighborhood and small family house. The conclusion draws on some relevant literary contexts to establish the social commitment of the young artist as a measure of integration and success.

Service delivery is an integral part of the activities that must be regularly performed by the personnel of any library, especially in academic libraries. This review paper focused on the analytical factors that could boost the service delivery among staff in academic libraries. These include quality of library services, user satisfaction, user engagement, staff performance, access to information, library usage, and the academic performance of students. The paper reviewed relevant literature on each of the outlined factors to enable library staff to know how each factor would boost their service delivery job in their various libraries where they are saddled with the task of providing relevant educational resources in meeting the information needs of readers. To this end, it is expedient for the library management to seek and put in place those motivating factors that would improve the service delivery of its staff in the academic community. Also, the library management should engage their staff on the necessity of meeting the information needs of readers as they look up to the library as their last hope in getting relevant information for their academic and research activities. Besides, the institution’s management should give adequate support and provision for training and retraining of its workforce especially the library staff to enhance their productivity.