Libraries fail to lure students to come
Libraries fail to lure students to come
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Librarians working at highschools in Greater Jakarta agreed on Tuesday that school libraries in the city were failing to attract more students because they were neither "fun" nor "relaxing".
Aisyah Abdur Rahman, a librarian at the SMUN 66 high school in South Jakarta, said that out of the 700 students studying in the school, only 20 of them used the facility regularly and many said its services were inadequate.
"We don't have a catalog for our collection and there is no multimedia equipment provided," Aisyah said, adding that the library only had 40 seats and was still focussed on a physical upgrade.
Another librarian, Umar, in charge of the SMU 5 highschool library in Depok, West Java, said that his school's library needed an internet connection to attract students.
"Spending time in the library should also be fun and relaxing. A (DVD or) VCD collection is as important as the book collection, but we're short of money," he said.
University of Indonesia Library Science Department head Fuad Gani said according to his research, students' low interest in using school libraries was related to the bad management of the facilities.
"The conditions of many school libraries in the city are distressing. My research showed that many principals considered that good library management was not a priority and had no impact on students' intellectual capabilities," Fuad told The Jakarta Post.
Out of 500 Jakarta elementary school students that he interviewed last year, the majority felt they did not need to use libraries because they said buying books was easier to do than browsing in libraries.
To help school librarians to turn libraries into comfortable places to learn and research, his department, along with Program Bimbingan Anak Sampoerna (cigarette manufacturer PT HM Sampoerna's child development program) held a three-day library management training course in the university's campus, inviting participants from 20 schools in Jakarta, Depok and Bogor.
The program launched a campaign called Pustaka Kita (Our Libraries) to train school librarians to motivating students to come to libraries by formulating a catalog, adding multimedia facilities and alternative reading materials, such as comic books.
Fuad said the use of libraries was an indicator of the intellectual capabilities of the next generation of students.
"We hope to encourage these librarians to improve their libraries' conditions and to attract more students to explore these places." (006)