Dutch KITLV to augment role in Indonesia

Dutch KITLV to augment role in Indonesia

Tantri Yuliandini, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

If somebody were to mention Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-,
Land- en Volkenkunde (KITLV) on the street, the response would
most likely be one of bafflement.

But mention The Royal Institute of Linguistics and
Anthropology (the English translation of KITLV) to those
concerned with Indonesian history, archaeology, linguistics and
anthropology you should get a flash of recognition at the very
least.

Established in 1851, KITLV is one of the world's oldest
institutes on humanity studies. Since then it has collected,
documented and published information on history, anthropology,
economics and languages of Southeast Asia -- with an emphasis on
Indonesia as well as Oceania and the Caribbean.

Its less known existence here is mainly due to its purely
academic nature, one of its more prominent works being the two-
volume 2,500-page Old Javanese-English Dictionary that has become
a must for students of Indonesian archaeology and languages.
KITLV also publishes the English-journal Bijdragen tot de Taal-,
Land- en Volkenkunde (Contributions to Linguistics and
Anthropology, or BKI), and editions of Indonesian texts published
in a 28-volume Bibliotheca Indonesica.

KITLV is an institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts
and Sciences (KNAW), which functions as, among other things,
advisor to the Netherlands government on matters related to
scientific research.

At the time of its establishment, the Dutch government felt
the need to understand more about its colonies, Indonesia in
particular, because of its importance to the Netherlands.

"Well that's colonial origins, we have nothing to do now with
our government institutions. We are financed by the government,
but the government doesn't interfere with our operations," KITLV
director Gert J. Oostindie told The Jakarta Post in an interview
here.

The institute's activities, over the last 150 years, were to
maintain a library, the publishing of books and journals, as well
as conduct research, Oostindie said.

In fact, the institution's procurement program was so
successful that Indonesians wishing to do research about the
country's history would sometimes need to go to Leiden, the
Netherlands, for data.

Aside from books and journals, KITLV also boasts 13,000 old
and new maps and atlases, 150,000 photographs from the colonial
period, 3,500 prints and drawings, 630 oriental manuscripts and
other records, 1,325 western manuscripts and other records, as
well as 930 audiovisual materials.

"We now have over half a million volumes in our collection,
with about 65 percent relating to Indonesia," Oostindie said,
explaining that KITLV has the world's largest collection on
Indonesia.

Besides its central operations in Leiden, KITLV also maintains
an office here in Jakarta, mainly to help with the procurement of
materials from the country.

The KITLV office in Jakarta was founded in 1969 and has been
headed by Jaap Erkelens since the 1970s.

"The initial idea of our office here was that we needed an
acquisitions office here. If you want to find all the relevant
publications on Indonesia you cannot do that from Europe, you
have to be here," Oostindie said.

Since then the office has also undertaken translation work
into Bahasa Indonesia, for publications that were initially
available only in Dutch or English.

The office was also to play a role in the Dutch-Indonesian
scholarly exchange, Oostindie said, explaining that this exchange
in the past had failed to materialize as bilateral relations
between the two countries had at one time soured.

"We think it's a new day now, relations between the region and
the Netherlands are rather good, and scholarly exchange between
the region and the Netherlands is increasing again," he said.

Oostindie's visit to the country, together with chief
librarian Roger Tol, was to explore the possibilities for an
expansion of the Indonesian office so that the role as mediator
for scholarly exchange could resume and be expanded.

Along with the changes in role, the KITLV will also have a new
head as Erkelens retires in May 2003. Roger Tol, currently KITLV
chief librarian in Leiden, will fill the position in May next
year.

"We hope that this office here will become more active in
scholarly cooperation between Indonesian and Dutch scholars, and
perhaps in a later stage also Southeast Asian and European
scholars," Oostindie said.

During their visit here, Oostindie and Tol have talked to
various Indonesian scholars and discovered many parallel subjects
with those of Dutch researchers that the KITLV feels it could
organize joint seminars.

To advise on KITLV Jakarta's new functions, the institute has
established a council of advisors consisting of the director of
the National Library, the director of the National Archives, the
vice president of the National Institute of Sciences (LIPI),
former ambassador to Australia Sabam Siagian and former director-
general of culture Edi Sedyawati.

"The institute in the Netherlands has an all European advisory
board, because its in Europe. Now in Indonesia, we need
Indonesian scholars to advise us," Oostindie said.

Tol said that later in his new role as the head of the office,
he hoped that he would be able to expand services, lift the
institution's profile and increase its role as a gateway for
Dutch and Indonesian scholars to cooperate.

-- KITLV Jakarta is located at Jl. Taman Widya Chandra No. 8,
Kompleks LIPI-D4, South Jakarta. Tel. 021-5203237.