University libraries are put to the test

By Muhartoyo

JAKARTA (JP): Do Indonesian university students really need libraries?

This question came to mind after a suggestion was made to close college libraries for a week to test whether they lived up to their role as sources of information (The Jakarta Post Aug. 12, 1997).

Joseph Luhukay made the suggestion at a workshop organized by Yarsi University. The computer science expert, from the Capital Market Reference Center, said that if nobody reacted to the absence of library services then maybe books and journals were not needed at universities.

The workshop urged librarians to be more "customer driven" in the information age.

Having worked in college libraries for many years, I believe that most university libraries would be closed down if they conducted the test. There are several reasons for this.

First, the budget for improving the range of books at most university libraries varied from Rp 2 million to Rp 50 million. Only a few have a budget of more than Rp 100 million for their book collections and none have a budget of more than Rp 200 million.

Some university libraries exist with a budget of less than Rp 1 million, while others must accept what they are given and have no authority to request books.

As a matter of fact, to subscribe to 1,000 core international scientific journals requires more than Rp 1 billion. A small budget clearly limits the number of scientific journals a university library can afford and the number of new books which can be added to its collection.

If a university library's collection is inadequate and outdated, how then can they meet the complex demands of their users?

Some university libraries are spacious but many others are not. Worse still, few university libraries employ qualified librarians.

The second reason the suggested test could bring about mass library closure is the lack of integration between university library systems and teaching methods. A visit to the library will not earn students a better grade. They can get higher marks by relying on their lecturers' hand-outs and the content of lectures.

On the other hand, lecturers are in difficult position. What if they ask their students to read a particular references but it is not in the library. Or if they do, there are not enough copies of the book.

University librarians are not directly involved in the teaching and learning process. As a result, the library collections they develop do not match the needs of the users. Even if librarians were involved, universities would still lack the budget to meet the needs of students and the academic staff.

University librarians in developed countries have a close relationship with academic staff. They know exactly what kind of collections are needed to satisfy the users, have adequate budgets to develop their collection and employ qualified staff to render good service.

Foreign university libraries can subscribe to 2,000 scientific journals, are usually spacious and have well-organized collections.

Post-graduate students and academic staff have special privileges: they can borrow more books, use private studies, enjoy a free interlibrary loan service and an on-line retrieval service.

University students in developed countries are quite dependent on the library. Their lecturers usually give assignments that require a lot of reading of reference books, all of which are available in the library. These students would really miss out if the library was closed.

Every academic year, students join a library tour to familiarize themselves with the collection and the services offered. They know how important the library services will be during their course.

The third reason for the poor standard of university libraries here is the English language skills among students and academic staff. Most books in a library's collection are written in English and it is an open secret that the level of English among students and staff is lacking. We cannot expect users with poor English to fully utilize an English-dominated library collection.

The fourth reason is the absence of interlibrary loans. No single library can meet all the information requirements of its users. If a large library, with a sizable collection, in a developed country must cooperate with other libraries to meet demand then a small college library certainly needs to follow suit.

Unfortunately an interlibrary loan service is not available in Indonesia. To provide such a service requires a well-organized collection, reliable transportation (postal) coupled with a good networking system. In this computer era, networking is easily achieved. However, lack of budget and qualified personnel prevents networking and interlibrary loans.

It is true that libraries can generate some money from the services they offer. However they cannot rely on this income for the development of their collection and improvement of services. This is partly because developing a good library system requires a lot more money than the library can earn.

Moreover, libraries are supposed to be a public service and most people expect to get these services free of charge. We can learn from the libraries which have long practiced an income generating service, such as the Center for Scientific Information and Documentation at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences. This center earns some money from value-added services such as Current Awareness Services, the Industrial Information Package and information retrieval services. But even this center needs a lot more money to keep abreast of issues in the information age.

I strongly believe university students and academic staff would use the library extensively if they had enough incentives to do so.

The most important incentive is a direct relationship between library systems and what is being taught. This conclusion requires all parties to work together: university management, academic staff, students and librarians.

Are we prepared for that?

The writer is archivist at the Secretariat of Asian and Pacific Coconut Community.