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The revival of Indonesian librarianship
ht.
Libr.
Rev.
(1972) 4, 409-415
The Revival of Indonesian Librarianship WILLIAM
LANDRAM
WILLIAMSONt
International librarianship suffers grievously from a lack of balanced reporting on the state of librarianship in developing nations. The foreign visitor has great difficulty in evaluating what he sees because he is forced to use as his frame of reference the library situations that he knows best, typically the state of librarianship in his own well-developed country. Under these circumstances, the visitor tends at first to be discouraged by much of what he sees and then perhaps over-impressed by achievements that would be modest in his own country. Few have the opportunity to return after a period of years to a developing nation to see changes within a perspective related to the particular country and to assess realistically the pace of improvement. This article seeks to report the state of librarianship in Indonesia as it has changed during the lapse of eight years from the time I left in 1962 and returned in 1970. Whatever the merits of the assessment, the factual information adds to the sparse store of knowledge available about librarianship in one of the most interesting parts of the world. Indonesia with more than 120 million people, is the fifth largest nation of the world and is favoured by a rich cultural heritage, spectacular scenery, and a wealth of natural resources. Stretching more than 3000 miles from Sumatra in the west to Western New Guinea (West Irian) in the east, the 4000 islands of Indonesia resemble a great necklace strung below the mainland of Asia. Although the number of tourists has increased substantially in recent years, only a small proportion of the world’s citizens have had the privilege of seeing the beauties of the countryside and enjoying the warm hospitality of the Indonesian people. As compared with the situation when I left Djakarta at the end of a two-year assignment with a Ford Foundation project to assist teachers’ colleges, Indonesia is a much improved place to visit. Djakarta, though not one of the world’s most delightful capitals, now has broad, land7 Library School consin 53706, U.S.A.
of the University
of Wisconsin,
600 North
Park
Street,
Madison,
Wis-
410
W.
L.
WILLIAMSON
scaped avenues, fine new buildings and monuments, several excellent hotels, many new factories, attractive amusement parks, shops filled with local and imported goods, and, most important, a multitude of air conditioners that help to make life pleasant in this tropical city. These amenities for the visitor parallel improvements in university libraries that lead me to feel substantial optimism for the future. The contrasts after an interval of eight years encourage me to believe that foreign assistance can help make a difference, although I want to emphasize at the very beginning that the permanent improvements have come and must come through the efforts of the capable Indonesians who have supported and operated the libraries and created a sound structure for further development. My return to Indonesia came as a result of an invitation from the International Relations Office of the American Library Association to serve as consultant on university libraries to the Indonesian Directorate of Higher Education, under a contract with the U.S. Agency for International Development. Travelling by automobile across Java and by plane to Makassar in the Celebes and Padang in Sumatra, my wife and I were afforded an extraordinary opportunity to see a nation that remains little known to most westerners. I quickly recaptured a sufficient command of the Indonesian language so that I could easily communicate our wants and even converse reasonably well with people throughout the country. Even for the new visitor, however, life in Indonesia is a great deal better than it was in 1962. Along with the comforts for the prosperous, a new abundance of goods and stability of prices have helped to eliminate the ubiquitous pickpocket who was an annoyance in earlier days. Djakarta, in common with other major cities of the world, is not immune from street crime, but only slight caution is needed there. In the rest of Indonesia, such incidents are rare indeed. Not all of Indonesia’s problems are solved, of course. The massacre of more than half a million people following the atrocities of the 1965 coup has left a legacy of distrust and fear that, one senses, will take many generations to dissipate. There are still a considerable number of people in detainment camps and others under an official cloud that prevents them from participating fully in national life. Some people are in rags sleeping without shelter, although, as has almost always been true in this fertile country, few if any are actually starving. Whether the many new foreign investors will leave an equitable share of their profits in the country and whether the common man finds his lot improved, as do the prosperous, are questions for economists to answer over a period of time. Most Indonesians of modest means whom I know report that their daily welfare has not
THE
REVIVAL
OF
INDONESIAN
LIBRARIANSHIP
411
greatly improved. My own impression was that life has eased a bit for the average man, if only in the respect that the rupiah is stable and prices are rising at only a moderate rate in contrast to the galloping inflation of the early 1960s. Libraries too have many remaining problems. Academic library book collections are, without exception, too small and lacking in essential works. Although the libraries I visited were usually connected with the best-known and largest universities, they were typically under-supplied with books, journals, and reference works. Very few libraries, even in the best universities, are able to import the products of world scholarship and even those with special means to buy abroad have very limited resources. Government regulations have eased considerably, but the problem of effectively providing foreign exchange funds is far from solution. Very many libraries have some foreign books that they have received as gifts, but those books are typically obsolescent at best and often quite inappropriate in subject matter and level of treatment to the libraries that house them. (It is literally true that some medical libraries include Nancy Drew mystery stories in their collections.) Public and private agencies in the United States have shipped more than a million and a half books to Indonesia during the past few years. The books selected for shipment are ones that contribute only in part to the mission of the particular libraries that receive them. It would be difficult to assessaccurately the balance between the contribution made by those books that respond to real needs and the damage done by overloading unwary custodians of libraries with books that only add to their costs of housing, processing, and care; certainly both effects can be seen. Books of great importance are lacking. Reprints of The Encyclopedia (lf the Social Sciences are widely available, but I was unable to find a single copy of the new International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciencesthat brings it up to date. I was pleased to find a set of the Catalogue G&&ale de la Bibliothdque Nationale and, at the same time, a bit disheartened to see its volumes in a disarray that appeared to reflect a lack of awareness of its importance. Perhaps the most profoundly troubling experience of all was to find professors who gave no evidence of concern that they are cut off from any knowledge of current research elsewhere in the world. For support of undergraduate instruction, a few favoured institutions possess numerous copies of American textbooks that were acquired as a part of earlier assistance projects, but most of those books are considerably out of date now. In any case, everyone agreed that few undergraduates have sufficient command of English to enable them to make full use of books in that language; reports varied as to the ability of advanced graduate students to read English fluently.
412
W.
L.
WILLIAMSON
With the conditions of book collections so bleak, one might question my initial optimism about the improvement of Indonesian libraries and librarianship. Yet there are bright spots evenin regard to book collections. The fine botanical collections of the Bibliotheca Bogoriensis continue to grow, very largely through a network of exchanges with institutions around the world. The library of the Faculty of Economics of Gadjah Mada University in Jogjakarta continues to receive new books and journals under a Ford Foundation grant. The library of the Institute of Technology in Bandung enjoys the fruits of its favoured position both with the Government of Indonesia and with the now discontinued USAID Kentucky Project. For many years, it received numerous books and journals in its fields of interest even though, recently, its receipts have been drastically curtailed. The medical faculties of the University of Indonesia in Djakarta and of Airlangga University in Surabaja are supplied with at least basic journals and indexes by the China Medical Board of New York as additions to the substantial collections acquired during the period when they enjoyed sponsorship through American assistance projects. Most recently, the United States Agency for International Development supported a three-year Shelf Enrichment Project that enabled selected institutions to acquire American publications of their own choice. My assignment was in the context of that project. Although the many difficulties of acquisition had kept more than a rather small minority of the books from arriving by the time I was there, the Project itself had some especially notable features. These features and the experiences and structure generated by the Project are likely to produce even greater results over the years than the particular books that are received. Each institution was given permission to choose those books that it needed. In consequence, the faculty members and the librarians of the institutions had the responsibility and the opportunity to make a purposeful selection of titles. With few exceptions, they chose to order only one copy or a very few copies of a title rather than following the earlier practice of acquiring quite large numbers of copies of a few textbooks. Although the total amount of money assigned to each institution amounted to only a few thousand dollars, the books were often selected with impressive discrimination and they will make a contribution to the teaching and research of the universities. More importantly, this opportunity set the stage for thoughtful attention to the collection needs of the libraries. Aside from hopeful developments related specifically to the university libraries, a parallel project aimed at building the libraries of research institutes is bringing to the country a number of important American publications that will be available to
THE
REVIVAL
OF
INDONESIAN
LIBRARIANSHIP
413
responsible faculty members of the universities. Dr Russell Shank, Director of Libraries of the Smithsonian Institution, visited Indonesia during October and November of 1970 to make an evaluative survey of research institute libraries parallel to my own of university libraries. His report throws additional light on the contribution to be expected from those libraries. If the book collections present a bleak picture lightened by only a few bright spots, the state of librarianship is impressively improved over the situation in 1962. There are more librarians in service now, and many of them are better-trained than was true earlier. Critical shortages remain, but there are now a considerable number of obviously capable librarians in service. Many of these librarians have been educated abroad, largely in the United States under AID or foundation grants. The Library School in Djakarta, which has survived since its beginnings in 1952 under many hardships, is now in a healthy relationship as a part of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Indonesia and is admitting candidates only for its master’s degree programme, making it solely a graduate institution. Its faculty is hardpressed, it lacks good quarters, and its library is abysmally weak, but the staff is capable and the School now has the structural and degree characteristics that can enable it to become the sort of educational facility that can produce in Indonesia the competent librarians the country needs. An additional hopeful development is a sound relationship being built with the Library School of the University of Hawaii. Dean Robert D. Stevens visited Djakarta for two weeks during 1970 to assess the needs for library education. He then returned in 1971 to serve as visiting professor at the School during the closing months of his sabbatical leave. At the same time, Mrs Rusina Sjahrial, the School’s Head, went to Honolulu where she had an opportunity to study curriculum development. Those exchanges of personnel promise to bear more fruit in the future. In Djakarta, Bandung, Makassar, and Jogjakarta, librarians returned from study abroad have set up short courses to train library technicians to fill the needs during an interim period until a sufficient number of fully qualified librarians is available. These programmes pose a danger that their graduates will be accepted as adequately trained to serve the need for library leadership, but there is some hope that danger may be avoided. Also in Jogjakarta, a group of librarians has constituted itself as an informal body of consultants and advisers to help the many faculty (departmental) libraries of Gadjah Mada University to re-organize their facilities and collections. Where the offer of help has been accepted (and one of the great strengths of the programme is
414
w. L.
WILLIAMSON
that it relies on voluntary participation), the improved order is impressive. In Surabaja, a different pattern is evident. There, the Airlangga University Librarian herself exercises effective supervisory control over the various faculty libraries and provides in-service training that supplies the needed library assistants. As the librarians of Indonesia grow in number and competence, the way is open for renewed professional meetings and co-operation. In November, 1969, 72 librarians and educational leaders met in Djakarta under the sponsorship of the Directorate of Higher Education with financial assistance from the Asia Foundation. Their deliberations, reports, and recommendations demonstrated a high level of competence and awareness. In August 1970, a number of Indonesians attended a regional conference of librarians in Singapore. More recently, the moribund Indonesian Library Association has revived and a new association of special librarians has formed. These meetings reflect both the increase in numbers of librarians and also an improved social climate for the development of libraries. University administrators have always given lip service to the importance of libraries, and most universities have had at least token book collections. Now, however, there is a new interest that is being translated into action. Even among those universities that I was able to visit, there are at least a dozen library buildings new since 1962 and more than half of them are under construction or newly occupied. Buildings alone do not make libraries, but their existence is concrete evidence of a recognition by university authorities of the need and priority importance of library development. The most impressive and potentially influential library building and programme that I saw was at Satya Watjana University in Salatiga in Central Java. This building visually expresses library excellence, and the programme of services and publications provides, in developing outline, a similar demonstration. Although a few universities have always had libraries of considerable strength, this library, with the aid of the Christian international bodies that help to support the University, will be the first to develop so systematically and completely that it can serve as a model. Indonesia has already some shining examples of topnotch librarians and a few university libraries that, considering the problems they face, are doing remarkably well. There are none that do not need a great deal more than they now have. There are grievous lacks-often indeed total absence-of essential publications. Many more librarians of high quality are needed. But, in striking contrast to 1962, the basic structure is now there. A number of new colleagues have joined the capable librarians still in service from 1962. There is a very real hope for growth
THE
REVIVAL
OF
INDONESIAN
LIBRARIANSHIP
415
in the near future. Those foreign agencies and individuals who have served in Indonesia in the past are justified, I believe, in thinking that their work has been fruitful. The optimism that I feel after seeing Indonesian librarianship again is based, however, not on what foreign funds, projects, or individuals can do but on the fact that there is now a cadre of Indonesian librarians who have the competence, education, understanding, and independence to make their own sound judgments as to what they need and what they wish to do. Assistance given in the future can be assured under these conditions of having a substantial impact of permanent value.
Libr.
Rev.
(1972) 4, 409-415
The Revival of Indonesian Librarianship WILLIAM
LANDRAM
WILLIAMSONt
International librarianship suffers grievously from a lack of balanced reporting on the state of librarianship in developing nations. The foreign visitor has great difficulty in evaluating what he sees because he is forced to use as his frame of reference the library situations that he knows best, typically the state of librarianship in his own well-developed country. Under these circumstances, the visitor tends at first to be discouraged by much of what he sees and then perhaps over-impressed by achievements that would be modest in his own country. Few have the opportunity to return after a period of years to a developing nation to see changes within a perspective related to the particular country and to assess realistically the pace of improvement. This article seeks to report the state of librarianship in Indonesia as it has changed during the lapse of eight years from the time I left in 1962 and returned in 1970. Whatever the merits of the assessment, the factual information adds to the sparse store of knowledge available about librarianship in one of the most interesting parts of the world. Indonesia with more than 120 million people, is the fifth largest nation of the world and is favoured by a rich cultural heritage, spectacular scenery, and a wealth of natural resources. Stretching more than 3000 miles from Sumatra in the west to Western New Guinea (West Irian) in the east, the 4000 islands of Indonesia resemble a great necklace strung below the mainland of Asia. Although the number of tourists has increased substantially in recent years, only a small proportion of the world’s citizens have had the privilege of seeing the beauties of the countryside and enjoying the warm hospitality of the Indonesian people. As compared with the situation when I left Djakarta at the end of a two-year assignment with a Ford Foundation project to assist teachers’ colleges, Indonesia is a much improved place to visit. Djakarta, though not one of the world’s most delightful capitals, now has broad, land7 Library School consin 53706, U.S.A.
of the University
of Wisconsin,
600 North
Park
Street,
Madison,
Wis-
410
W.
L.
WILLIAMSON
scaped avenues, fine new buildings and monuments, several excellent hotels, many new factories, attractive amusement parks, shops filled with local and imported goods, and, most important, a multitude of air conditioners that help to make life pleasant in this tropical city. These amenities for the visitor parallel improvements in university libraries that lead me to feel substantial optimism for the future. The contrasts after an interval of eight years encourage me to believe that foreign assistance can help make a difference, although I want to emphasize at the very beginning that the permanent improvements have come and must come through the efforts of the capable Indonesians who have supported and operated the libraries and created a sound structure for further development. My return to Indonesia came as a result of an invitation from the International Relations Office of the American Library Association to serve as consultant on university libraries to the Indonesian Directorate of Higher Education, under a contract with the U.S. Agency for International Development. Travelling by automobile across Java and by plane to Makassar in the Celebes and Padang in Sumatra, my wife and I were afforded an extraordinary opportunity to see a nation that remains little known to most westerners. I quickly recaptured a sufficient command of the Indonesian language so that I could easily communicate our wants and even converse reasonably well with people throughout the country. Even for the new visitor, however, life in Indonesia is a great deal better than it was in 1962. Along with the comforts for the prosperous, a new abundance of goods and stability of prices have helped to eliminate the ubiquitous pickpocket who was an annoyance in earlier days. Djakarta, in common with other major cities of the world, is not immune from street crime, but only slight caution is needed there. In the rest of Indonesia, such incidents are rare indeed. Not all of Indonesia’s problems are solved, of course. The massacre of more than half a million people following the atrocities of the 1965 coup has left a legacy of distrust and fear that, one senses, will take many generations to dissipate. There are still a considerable number of people in detainment camps and others under an official cloud that prevents them from participating fully in national life. Some people are in rags sleeping without shelter, although, as has almost always been true in this fertile country, few if any are actually starving. Whether the many new foreign investors will leave an equitable share of their profits in the country and whether the common man finds his lot improved, as do the prosperous, are questions for economists to answer over a period of time. Most Indonesians of modest means whom I know report that their daily welfare has not
THE
REVIVAL
OF
INDONESIAN
LIBRARIANSHIP
411
greatly improved. My own impression was that life has eased a bit for the average man, if only in the respect that the rupiah is stable and prices are rising at only a moderate rate in contrast to the galloping inflation of the early 1960s. Libraries too have many remaining problems. Academic library book collections are, without exception, too small and lacking in essential works. Although the libraries I visited were usually connected with the best-known and largest universities, they were typically under-supplied with books, journals, and reference works. Very few libraries, even in the best universities, are able to import the products of world scholarship and even those with special means to buy abroad have very limited resources. Government regulations have eased considerably, but the problem of effectively providing foreign exchange funds is far from solution. Very many libraries have some foreign books that they have received as gifts, but those books are typically obsolescent at best and often quite inappropriate in subject matter and level of treatment to the libraries that house them. (It is literally true that some medical libraries include Nancy Drew mystery stories in their collections.) Public and private agencies in the United States have shipped more than a million and a half books to Indonesia during the past few years. The books selected for shipment are ones that contribute only in part to the mission of the particular libraries that receive them. It would be difficult to assessaccurately the balance between the contribution made by those books that respond to real needs and the damage done by overloading unwary custodians of libraries with books that only add to their costs of housing, processing, and care; certainly both effects can be seen. Books of great importance are lacking. Reprints of The Encyclopedia (lf the Social Sciences are widely available, but I was unable to find a single copy of the new International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciencesthat brings it up to date. I was pleased to find a set of the Catalogue G&&ale de la Bibliothdque Nationale and, at the same time, a bit disheartened to see its volumes in a disarray that appeared to reflect a lack of awareness of its importance. Perhaps the most profoundly troubling experience of all was to find professors who gave no evidence of concern that they are cut off from any knowledge of current research elsewhere in the world. For support of undergraduate instruction, a few favoured institutions possess numerous copies of American textbooks that were acquired as a part of earlier assistance projects, but most of those books are considerably out of date now. In any case, everyone agreed that few undergraduates have sufficient command of English to enable them to make full use of books in that language; reports varied as to the ability of advanced graduate students to read English fluently.
412
W.
L.
WILLIAMSON
With the conditions of book collections so bleak, one might question my initial optimism about the improvement of Indonesian libraries and librarianship. Yet there are bright spots evenin regard to book collections. The fine botanical collections of the Bibliotheca Bogoriensis continue to grow, very largely through a network of exchanges with institutions around the world. The library of the Faculty of Economics of Gadjah Mada University in Jogjakarta continues to receive new books and journals under a Ford Foundation grant. The library of the Institute of Technology in Bandung enjoys the fruits of its favoured position both with the Government of Indonesia and with the now discontinued USAID Kentucky Project. For many years, it received numerous books and journals in its fields of interest even though, recently, its receipts have been drastically curtailed. The medical faculties of the University of Indonesia in Djakarta and of Airlangga University in Surabaja are supplied with at least basic journals and indexes by the China Medical Board of New York as additions to the substantial collections acquired during the period when they enjoyed sponsorship through American assistance projects. Most recently, the United States Agency for International Development supported a three-year Shelf Enrichment Project that enabled selected institutions to acquire American publications of their own choice. My assignment was in the context of that project. Although the many difficulties of acquisition had kept more than a rather small minority of the books from arriving by the time I was there, the Project itself had some especially notable features. These features and the experiences and structure generated by the Project are likely to produce even greater results over the years than the particular books that are received. Each institution was given permission to choose those books that it needed. In consequence, the faculty members and the librarians of the institutions had the responsibility and the opportunity to make a purposeful selection of titles. With few exceptions, they chose to order only one copy or a very few copies of a title rather than following the earlier practice of acquiring quite large numbers of copies of a few textbooks. Although the total amount of money assigned to each institution amounted to only a few thousand dollars, the books were often selected with impressive discrimination and they will make a contribution to the teaching and research of the universities. More importantly, this opportunity set the stage for thoughtful attention to the collection needs of the libraries. Aside from hopeful developments related specifically to the university libraries, a parallel project aimed at building the libraries of research institutes is bringing to the country a number of important American publications that will be available to
THE
REVIVAL
OF
INDONESIAN
LIBRARIANSHIP
413
responsible faculty members of the universities. Dr Russell Shank, Director of Libraries of the Smithsonian Institution, visited Indonesia during October and November of 1970 to make an evaluative survey of research institute libraries parallel to my own of university libraries. His report throws additional light on the contribution to be expected from those libraries. If the book collections present a bleak picture lightened by only a few bright spots, the state of librarianship is impressively improved over the situation in 1962. There are more librarians in service now, and many of them are better-trained than was true earlier. Critical shortages remain, but there are now a considerable number of obviously capable librarians in service. Many of these librarians have been educated abroad, largely in the United States under AID or foundation grants. The Library School in Djakarta, which has survived since its beginnings in 1952 under many hardships, is now in a healthy relationship as a part of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Indonesia and is admitting candidates only for its master’s degree programme, making it solely a graduate institution. Its faculty is hardpressed, it lacks good quarters, and its library is abysmally weak, but the staff is capable and the School now has the structural and degree characteristics that can enable it to become the sort of educational facility that can produce in Indonesia the competent librarians the country needs. An additional hopeful development is a sound relationship being built with the Library School of the University of Hawaii. Dean Robert D. Stevens visited Djakarta for two weeks during 1970 to assess the needs for library education. He then returned in 1971 to serve as visiting professor at the School during the closing months of his sabbatical leave. At the same time, Mrs Rusina Sjahrial, the School’s Head, went to Honolulu where she had an opportunity to study curriculum development. Those exchanges of personnel promise to bear more fruit in the future. In Djakarta, Bandung, Makassar, and Jogjakarta, librarians returned from study abroad have set up short courses to train library technicians to fill the needs during an interim period until a sufficient number of fully qualified librarians is available. These programmes pose a danger that their graduates will be accepted as adequately trained to serve the need for library leadership, but there is some hope that danger may be avoided. Also in Jogjakarta, a group of librarians has constituted itself as an informal body of consultants and advisers to help the many faculty (departmental) libraries of Gadjah Mada University to re-organize their facilities and collections. Where the offer of help has been accepted (and one of the great strengths of the programme is
414
w. L.
WILLIAMSON
that it relies on voluntary participation), the improved order is impressive. In Surabaja, a different pattern is evident. There, the Airlangga University Librarian herself exercises effective supervisory control over the various faculty libraries and provides in-service training that supplies the needed library assistants. As the librarians of Indonesia grow in number and competence, the way is open for renewed professional meetings and co-operation. In November, 1969, 72 librarians and educational leaders met in Djakarta under the sponsorship of the Directorate of Higher Education with financial assistance from the Asia Foundation. Their deliberations, reports, and recommendations demonstrated a high level of competence and awareness. In August 1970, a number of Indonesians attended a regional conference of librarians in Singapore. More recently, the moribund Indonesian Library Association has revived and a new association of special librarians has formed. These meetings reflect both the increase in numbers of librarians and also an improved social climate for the development of libraries. University administrators have always given lip service to the importance of libraries, and most universities have had at least token book collections. Now, however, there is a new interest that is being translated into action. Even among those universities that I was able to visit, there are at least a dozen library buildings new since 1962 and more than half of them are under construction or newly occupied. Buildings alone do not make libraries, but their existence is concrete evidence of a recognition by university authorities of the need and priority importance of library development. The most impressive and potentially influential library building and programme that I saw was at Satya Watjana University in Salatiga in Central Java. This building visually expresses library excellence, and the programme of services and publications provides, in developing outline, a similar demonstration. Although a few universities have always had libraries of considerable strength, this library, with the aid of the Christian international bodies that help to support the University, will be the first to develop so systematically and completely that it can serve as a model. Indonesia has already some shining examples of topnotch librarians and a few university libraries that, considering the problems they face, are doing remarkably well. There are none that do not need a great deal more than they now have. There are grievous lacks-often indeed total absence-of essential publications. Many more librarians of high quality are needed. But, in striking contrast to 1962, the basic structure is now there. A number of new colleagues have joined the capable librarians still in service from 1962. There is a very real hope for growth
THE
REVIVAL
OF
INDONESIAN
LIBRARIANSHIP
415
in the near future. Those foreign agencies and individuals who have served in Indonesia in the past are justified, I believe, in thinking that their work has been fruitful. The optimism that I feel after seeing Indonesian librarianship again is based, however, not on what foreign funds, projects, or individuals can do but on the fact that there is now a cadre of Indonesian librarians who have the competence, education, understanding, and independence to make their own sound judgments as to what they need and what they wish to do. Assistance given in the future can be assured under these conditions of having a substantial impact of permanent value.