(24 Aug 2025) From digitizing the nation’s printed and recorded heritage to translating works into different languages, the National Library of the Philippines (NLP) is looking toward a future that embraces artificial intelligence (AI) and other technologies—all while staying grounded in its “race against time” to preserve books and documents invaluable to history.
NLP assistant director Edgardo Quiros said the library is now studying how AI can be used for translation and OCR (optical character recognition)—the conversion of images of text into their digital form.
He cited their efforts to translate, through AI, documents from NLP’s collection into the country’s major languages—Tagalog, Bicolano, Kapampangan, Pangasinan, Ilocano, Hiligaynon, Waray, and Cebuano. These languages are no longer regarded, from the colonial point of view, as dialects, given their vastly different vocabulary and structure.
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