University libraries are put to the test
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outdated, how then can they meet the complex demands of their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.