The development of Academic Libraries in Indonesia

For two weeks in December of 1991 I was able to visit a number of Indonesian academic libraries and departments of library studies, sponsored by the British Council. At the same time I spent several days looking in detail at the library service of one provincial university in Sumatra. My impressions after this relatively short visit was that Indonesia has a fine national library. In Jakarta and a few cities in Java there are state university libraries with respectably sized library buildings, although on the whole they are poorly stocked. However elsewhere in the provinces, particularly outside Java, there is often a different story. Academic library facilities, where they exist at all, are underdeveloped, measured by any standards.

Above all I was impressed during my visit by the charming and friendly people, and their desperate wish to improve themselves and develop their country through higher education. Over half of the 170 million people in Indonesia are under the age of twenty. Although the growth in population is now said to be under control there is an urgent need to expand the education services, and develop a skilled workforce, who can take advantage of the countries abundant natural resources. In recognition of this, the Indonesian government is embarking on a major programme of university building.

The idea of the large central library has not in the past been seen as crucial to the work of the university in Indonesia, as it would be in Britain or Western Europe. The overall level of provision has been poor, and librarians still have low status compared with academics. Many older Indonesian universities have been established on the American model, having powerful faculties, often vying with one another for any resources and jealously guarding what they have, compared with weak centralised structures and services. Hence a large university will often have a totally inadequate central library supplemented by a proliferation, of small and equally inadequate faculty based collections. The latter will be accessible to only one group of students and staff, and there will be no co-ordination between them.

So far most Indonesian government and overseas support to academic libraries has tended to be in terms of specific large-scale projects, usually funded by loans from the World Bank or the Asia Development Bank. Such projects have usually provided funding for an impressive new building, and perhaps even included provision for some degree of library automation. Yet, in the past, such basic matters as the capital and revenue funding for the provision and maintenance of book and periodical stocks have been overlooked. Equally, until the last few years there has been little thought given to the supply of suitably trained librarians to man them.

However there are encouraging signs of greater recognition by the Indonesian government of the key role that university libraries can play. This has been largely as a result of the work of a few senior Indonesian librarians, supported by the advice of previous western consultants. There appears to have been a shift in government policy, at least in theory, towards the development of stronger university libraries. It is also now accepted that to have an effective library service involves more than providing a prestigious building. For example, I heard an account of a university rector recently being criticised by a visitor from the Ministry of Education for having an expensive library building almost devoid of books. This was perhaps unfair on the rector concerned as this situation was far from untypical, largely due to previous government expenditure priorities.

What is also now needed is smaller scale assistance to individual institutions to ensure that they can acquire and maintain a basic stock of materials suitable for their students, and have the necessary trained staff to exploit them.

Indonesian academic librarians also experience many problems unknown to their colleagues in the west. One such is a hot and humid climate in which not only will paper more rapidly deteriorate, but also microfilm and even CD-ROM quickly go mouldy and become unusable if not kept in the right conditions. Thus air conditioning is essential for libraries. Although this often now available in the newer buildings, it is expensive to run, and there are occasional problems with the integrity of the electricity supply.

Another problem derives from the low salaries paid to government officials at all levels, compared with posts of equivalent responsibility in the private sector. This makes it almost mandatory, even for senior librarians to take a second job, whether official or unofficial, to maintain a reasonable standard of living. Even a university librarian is likely to have taken on additional senior duties, within the same institution or another. This duplication of jobs also applies to the academic staff, many of whom will also lecture in local private universities and therefore have little time after teaching to keep up to date and to publish.

However these problems are as nothing compared with the over-riding difficulties of obtaining up-to-date materials for their libraries, even when their are funds available for their purchase. Frequently this problem begins with not knowing what is published and available at the appropriate academic level. Most undergraduate teaching is through the medium of Indonesian, which in itself will not be the first language of many of the students. Frequently there are no student texts available in the Indonesian language and the cost of preparing and publishing translations is high. Thus there has to be great reliance on imported texts, particularly in the sciences and the social sciences, even for use by students who have little or no English. In one university I visited it was regarded as part of the lecturer's and the librarian's job to prepare abstracts in Indonesian of such works to assist their undergraduates.

Where western books are imported they can be inordinately expensive. This is partly because air freight charges, import taxes, and internal distribution costs are high, and there will also be a sizeable commission imposed by the local agent handling the order. Another problem is that there is a degree of corruption, which is far more apparent than in the west. Thus many officials are virtually forced to accept bribes to supplement their meagre wages. A proportion of all monies allocated for particular tasks, such as library book purchases, is almost bound to be syphoned off into the pockets of someone involved in the transaction.

There is also occasionally the problem faced by many librarians in developing countries, in subscribing in advance to publications such as periodicals. The prevailing culture requires that payment should be made for goods supplied, or for services performed, but does not accept the western concept of subscribing in advance. Thus persuading financial authorities to part with money for future services can be very difficult, it is usually far less complicated to devote any funds available to the purchase of monographs. Yet in many subjects the journal literature is pre-eminent.

The British Council, like other similar agencies from the developed world, has been providing a range of technical assistance to promote Indonesian academic libraries for many years. This includes scholarships for librarians to study in the United Kingdom, funding for visits by consultants, and support usually in the form of grants or gifts for individual institutions. This is in addition to an impressive range of cultural activities, which are not limited to arranging functions for the political and social elite in Jakarta. Some of these activities have a high-profile, such as helping to organise the recent highly successful Surat Emas: Golden Letters exhibition at the National Library, which included the display of priceless Indonesian manuscripts loaned by the British Library. Others less so, such as providing a British band to take part in a provincial Jazz Festival, or a troupe of Shakesperian actors to tour university campuses.

However, pressure on resources elsewhere is forcing the Council to reconsider and cut back some of their traditional library based activities. Thus the British Council Library at Bandung is scheduled to close later this year, and the stock will be donated to the library of the local technical university. By British standards this was only equivalent to a moderately well-stocked public branch library, nevertheless for the last thirty years it has been the best library in this major provincial city. Likewise there are no longer funds available for ad-hoc grants of British books to individual libraries, although there is a continuing stream of requests.

This is not to say that British support for Indonesian libraries will be discontinued. There will be continued assistance in the field of education and training including the provision of scholarships for young librarians, with sufficient language skills to benefit from study abroad, and also limited support for individual institutions. If the scholarships can be coupled with opportunities for the students to visit a range of different libraries in the west, they will return home fired with ideas and enthusiasm. However such aid will be wasted, and only lead to the personal frustration of the recipients, if subsequently they do not have the opportunity to put into practice what they have learned. Thus there is also an urgent need for help in providing a basic book and periodical stocks for many academic libraries, and this task is perhaps too great for any one agency.

It would be most useful if in the changing circumstances, the British Council, and all the other related agencies working in Indonesia could act more in concert together and with Indonesian academic librarians. This would ensure that there was no duplication of effort or treading on one another's toes. It would also see that aid projects were properly managed, the monies are spent for the purposes they were intended, and that agreed contributions from the local authorities are made. Above all it is crucial that the detailed advice should be taken of those actually working in the field, rather than funds being provided at an inter-governmental level.

There are a few encouraging signs of such co-ordination of effort. The World Bank is at last beginning to recognise that providing large scale capital funds for library building is not in itself sufficient unless there is also provision for library materials, and staff training. I wonder whether there is not room for even more co-ordination in this field. For example, although it would be unforgivable arrogance for aid giving countries to seek to determine what shall be stocked in another country's libraries, there may be some benefit in providing a proportion of any assistance in kind.

For example, the various European and American agencies could draw up, and keep up to date lists of recommended basic undergraduate text books, and essential bibliographical tools in key subjects. The majority of such works, whether published in Britain, America or on the Continent of Europe will already be available in the English language. It might therefore be possible to include a range of national interests in such collections. Thus the first tranche of aid provided to any academic library would be in the form of published materials appropriate to the teaching of that institution. This would at least provide the recipients with the tools necessary to spend the remainder of the aid package more wisely. Negotiations could also be held with the publishers of such titles, perhaps securing further discounts, or some additional benefit for the recipients - such as reduced royalties for translations into the home language. There might also be economies to be achieved from the bulk shipping and warehousing of such collections.

Another possibility for a concerted effort might be some form of bond scheme which could simplify the process of subscribing to academic journals. Thus the funding agencies might provide a sum of money equivalent to one year's subscription to a periodical, which would be held by the publisher for the duration of a subscription and invested. The library receiving the periodical could thereafter be invoiced retrospectively, and the bond would become forfeit if these invoices were not honoured. There might also be useful co-ordination in the provision of new technology, such as CD-ROM players, in the same way that the CDS-ISIS library automation package has been made freely available by UNESCO.

Perhaps these are half-baked ideas that have been tried before and failed. Alternatively it may be that any idea of a concerted effort by aid agencies is a vain hope and the need to promote individual national interests would always have to take precedence. However it is a shame that when there is such as obvious need for assistance, such aid as is given is not always put to the best use.

These suggestions do however beg a somewhat wider question. What degree of responsibility rests on the shoulders of the developed countries, including Britain, to provide technical assistance to a country such as Indonesia. It might be argued that all former colonial powers, have a duty to offer development assistance following independence. Yet some countries are clearly in more desperate need of help than others. Indonesia is not in need of humanitarian aid. It is far from being the poorest country in Asia, it has plentiful natural resources and an expanding economy. Although labour is cheap and wages are generally low, I did not see any evidence of starvation or malnutrition, and in the main cities I saw fewer beggars than I would now meet with during a visit to London. There are many other countries, elsewhere in Asia, in Africa and increasingly in Eastern Europe which are in more urgent need of any financial assistance that might be available.

There are however sound economic reasons for providing development aid. All the countries on the Asia Pacific rim seem likely to take a number of steps forward in economic development over the next two decades, with or without western help. These countries are also likely to represent important markets for our goods and expertise in the twenty-first century. Offering investment, and technical assistance at this crucial stage in their development may well be in the ultimate economic interests of the donor countries as well as the recipients. To some degree this is already being recognised not only by the western nations, but also by the Japanese. Britain, in particular, has much to gain in this respect since on the whole our past relations with Indonesia have been good.

On the other hand there is the question of the Indonesian government's record on human rights and the freedom of expression. Several of the Indonesians I met were quite prepared to discuss political issues, the impending elections, and the problems of their country, in an open and realistic way. They did not give the impression of living in a particularly repressive society. However shortly before my visit there was the Dili incident, in which a large number of political protestors from East Timor were killed as a result of the over-reaction of poorly trained, but heavily armed government troops. Ought western governments to assist with the economic development of a country that treats political dissent in this way? Alternatively, ought aid to be restricted to educational projects such as the development of academic libraries? One argument against the latter proposition would be that a better trained force in Dili might not have over-reacted in the same way.

Although there continues to be censorship of dissident or critical publications, the English language newspapers that I saw appeared to recognise and be prepared to say, albeit in muted terms, that something had gone wrong at Dili. Also the worldwide condemnation of the handling of this unfortunate incident does now appear to have had some impact. The developed world is more likely to be able to exert such influence if it continues to offer technical assistance, whilst also making clear its disapproval when appropriate.

David Stoker (with acknowledgments to Rosemary Shipsey, British Council Jakarta).

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