its use with the assistance of both UNESCO and the Technology and Livelihood Resource Center. The first edition of the PNB was published in 1977 using simplified MARC standards, and subsequently updated ever since. The library subsequently purchased three microcomputers in the 1980s and, through a Japanese grant, acquired three IBM PS/2 computers and microfilming and reprographics equipment. The Library for the Blind Division was organized in 1988 and subsequently launched in 1994. Scandal arose in September 1993 when it was discovered that a researcher from the National Historical Institute (now the National Historical Commission of the Philippines), later identified as Rolando Bayhon, was pilfering rare documents from the library's collections. According to some library employees, the pilfering of historical documents dates back to the 1970s, when President Ferdinand Marcos began writing a book on Philippine history titled Tadhana (Destiny), using as references library materials which were subsequently not returned. Having suspected widespread pilferage upon assuming the directorship in 1992, then-Director Adoracion B. Mendoza sought the assistance of the National Bureau of Investigation in recovering the stolen items. Some 700 items were recovered from an antique shop in Ermita and Bayhon was arrested. Although convicted of theft in July 1996, Bayhon was sentenced in absentia and still remains at large. The chief of the Filipiniana Division at the time, Maria Luisa Moral, who was believed to be involved in the scandal, was dismissed on September 25, but subsequently acquitted on May 29, 2008. Following Bayhon's arrest, Mendoza made several appeals calling on the Filipino people to return items pilfered from the library's collections without criminal liability. Around eight thousand documents, including the original copy of the Philippine Declaration of Independence among others, were subsequently returned to the library by various persons, including some six thousand borrowed by a professor of the University of the Philippines. In 1995, the National Library launched its local area network, consisting of a single file server and four workstations, and subsequently its online public access catalog (named Basilio, after the character in Rizal's novels) in 1998, as well as its website on March 15, 2001. Following the retirement of Mendoza in 2001, Prudenciana C. Cruz was appointed director and has overseen the continued computerization of its facilities, including the opening of the library's Internet room on July 23, 2001. That same year, the library began digitization of its collections, with an initial 52,000 pieces converted