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.