Introduction

Manobo is one of the typical Indigenous People in the Province of

Bukidnon and a one of its existing seven tribes. The Manobo is a Negrito

mixture and resembles to have small bodies, dark skin, and curly hair with

broad and flat noses. These people are natives from the municipalities of

Pangantucan, Kalilangan and Kadingilan. Others lived in Don Carlos, Kitaotao,

Kibawe, Quezon and Damulog (Sporkbot, 2014). The Manobo mostly inhabit in

the hinterlands of Bukidnon, Cotabato, Davao and Misamis Oriental (NCIP,

2003). Hinterlands are those areas which are not close to any cities or towns.

Datu Ensubay S. Talisan, 67 years old, one of the Elders of Manobo said

that their folktales had a various kinds. They had ancient tales about animals

like EYAN ENE ED TATAMORON TE BUTITI (The Tale of Butiti), heroes and

heroines like ENE ED TATAMORON TE TULALANG (The Tale of Tulalang),

kindness, evilness, stupidity and fate. He added that these accounts had been

formulated through oral traditional narratives from their ancestors, a rich

heritage which were passed to them as descendants. Unfortunately, some

young people of this tribe are empty about these historical accounts. They are

occupied with other cultural quotients due to cultural intermarriage.

Digital Book is a book-length publication in digital form, consisting of

text, images, or both readable on computers or other electronic devices. This is

a virtual structure of a printed book that was created by scanning its pages

while converting them into a corresponding page images through the process of

digitization. It uses a specified software to make the content accessible. The

specific software will prevent the content for any attempt of the text extraction

as a way to preserve the integrity of the accounts.

The way of coming up with a digital book is through the process of

digitization. Digitization involved simple data conversion from catalog cards or

paper to digital form (Fabunmi, B.A., Fabunmi, M. and Paris). Their study had

established that digitization was a significant task to make a virtual library. In

2008, Ceynowa acquired a big collaboration with the biggest search engine, the

Google, where he obtained a digital copies of library resources from its hard

copies for internet offers. In 2007, Hahn prevailed the seriousness of a digital

book mainly for preservation. He had also presented the quality of this output,

an initiative that gave awareness of its poor production.

Significance of the Study

Digital Book is a substantial output that is made to preserve printed

books on a digital form. The collection and the digitization of Manobo folktales

implied a firm way to preserve the rich heritage of intellectual property of the
Manobo as a continuity of cultural and historical memory. Such accounts will

be treated with full of respect, integrating an initiative to empower the culture.

Moreover, this output causes an improvement of the efficiency of information

search mechanism wherein the time of a particular researcher will not be

isolated on scanning and skimming a physical book.

Purpose of the Study

The researcher choses to collect and to develop a digital book of Manobo

folktales due to the extent that he had once lived with some of these people for

three (3) years in their community. Having an experienced to live with them,

the researcher had learnt some of their systems which includes cultural

norms, practices, beliefs, traditions and mores. The researcher had a close

relationship with them, believing that making them as respondents of this

study will cause no difficulty.

The Manobo folktales have distinction from the tales of the other six

tribes in Bukidnon. But, the intellectual property of Manobo is treated by them

as sacred and must not be denounced. As to treat it with respect, the isolation

of this output must be in the University domain only. It will not be offered in

the internet. It could be used in this institution for instruction or a reference

for mini-researches concerning about cultural accounts of native cultures.

 The counter purpose of this study is to give awareness to the teachers,

any non-teaching personnel in Bukidnon State University (BSU) and especially

to all the students of this institution. This will create a vision to them of having

a close relationship with native individuals especially the Manobo while

enriching their value of respecting such culture and for them to advocate the

integration of equity.

Objectives

a. to collect Manobo folktales

b. to develop the collected Manobo folktales into a book

c. to develop a digital book of Manobo folktales

Framework of the Study

This area discusses how the work is done by the researcher. The

researcher will collect Manobo folktales through recording and transcription. To

make a book into a digital form, this study will used the approach proposed by

Ambati, Jawahar, Pratha and Sankar in 2008. This approach was called

digitization.

Figure 1 shows the schematic diagram of the study.

Framework
 Collection Digitization

Recording Transcription Book

Audio Output Translation

Scanning

Encoding
Image Processing

Printing
Crop- Smoothi De- De-
Binding ping ng noising skewing

Book Digital Book

Figure 1. Flowchart of the Framework in Developing a Digital Book of

Manobo Folktales