BRIEF HISTORY OF UPCIDS. The Center for Integrative and Development Studies of the University of the Philippines (UPCIDS) was created in 1985 as a University-wide research unit with the mandate of mobilizing the multidisciplinary expertise of the UP in search of new paradigms, policies, strategies and programs that will help nation overcome constraints to its development.
The Center is the University System’s institution for integrative and collaborative research. It aims to nurture communities of scholars engaged in research on areas of national concern. As an integral part of an academic institution, the CIDS also aims to feedback to the University’s scholarly work, new paradigms developed in the process of doing basic and policy-oriented multidisciplinary research.
The initial thrusts of the Center’s research agenda revolve around specific social and political problems affecting the nations, such as those on human rights and peace studies, and the fields of foreign policy and international relations and development. In early 1989, the UP Assessments on the State of the Nation Project was launched and made the key project of the Center for the next three years.
Following the center’s reorganization in May 1993, four programs were formalized: the State of the Nation Assessment Program (SONAP), the peace, Conflict Resolution and Human Rights Program (ERP); and Special Programs.
The Special Programs initiated in the last three years include Marine Affairs, Biodiversity Conservation (with the National Academy of Science and Technology), Mindanao Studies, Pinatubo Studies/ Disaster Management, European Studies, Urban Concerns, Solid waste Management, and the emerging Environment.
The Center also established a network of Local Regional Studies in different UP units and is administering Special Projects. Among them are: the UP Centennial Discussion Series; studies on Overseas Filipino Workers; Filipino Well-Being Index Project; Studies on the Elderly; and Mega Issues Project (with the National Academy of Science and Technology).
In the recent years, other programs were established in the Center such as the China/Strategic Studies Program, Migration Studies and Policy Program, and the Sustainable Energy Program under the term of Executive Director Edna E. A. Co. her other projects include: the review of the National Marine Policy of 1994, the Philippines and the ASEAN community: Challenges and Prospects, and the UP Program for Environmental Governance.
At the present, under the term of Teresa S. Encarnacion Tadem, there are mixed of new and returning program to addressed various policy issues in the country. They are Education Research Program, Program on Higher Education Research and Policy Reform, Program on Data Science for Public Policy, Program on Escaping the Middle-Income Trap: Chains for Change (Partnerships for Inclusiveness and Competitiveness), Program on Alternative Development, Program on Social and Political Change, Program on Islamic Studies, Strategic Studies Program, and the Local-Regional Studies Network.
CIDS LIBRARY ORIGINS. Because of these mandate, the library is primarily a research library. Following the mandate of the Center to “ensure that the research outputs and recommendations of the Center are published and openly disseminated,” the UP Center for Integrative and Development Studies Library and Resource Center was established together with the Center. The Library traces its roots from the old Philippine Executive Academy (PEA) which will eventually be converted to the now UP Center for Integrative and Development Studies. PEA Library existed before the UP CIDS was formed and became the foundation of what the UP CIDS library is now. From then on, the UP CIDS Library provided and helped its researchers on their research needs. It also opened to other researchers outside CIDS and in fact being visited by different schools for research.
The UP CIDS library is a focal and vital point of the said mandate and regards itself as a special library due to its home institution and target clienteles. An institution need not to be a degree granting body to be able to operate a library (called an academic or school library). Many such institutions use their libraries to make their produced and acquired resources available to the public and its various clienteles.