Village school teachers in Indonesia tackle librarianship

George Miller reports

Twenty-one school-teachers from isolated village libraries in Eastern Indonesia are being introduced to the basics of librarianship for the first time.

In most cases, their schools have no general books (and in many cases only out-of-date teaching material) and no organised library collections. As part of the school development program of the Nusa Tenggara Association (NTA-East Indonesia Aid), designated teachers from these isolated schools are participating in basic library courses to assist them to commence the task of developing library collections.

The training consists of elementary facets of cataloguing, classification, circulation and preservation. The teachers gather at a central village school to receive training from either a senior university librarian (in the case of Flores) or a librarian recommended by the National Library Board branch in Kupang, West Timor. The schools are each provided with a copy of a basic text in Indonesian on descriptive cataloguing and the Dewey classification. Lessons begin with the rudiments of setting out a catalogue card; computers are still a thing of the future for most village schools in Eastern Indonesia.

The twenty-one schools also receive several consignments of Indonesian publications consisting of folktales, stories, novels, reference books and problem-solving books. The teachers are able to use these books on which to practice their new-found librarianship training. It is hoped that sometime in 2004, there will be a competition to see which school has established and is managing the best school library. There is also the possibility of holding a reading competition between students who have used books from the new school library collections.

In order that library growth is sustainable and is not forever dependent upon outside aid, the teaching staff and the School Committees (the equivalent of Australia's P and Cs) will be urged to take over the responsibility for bearing the cost of developing and maintaining the libraries. It is hoped that the disposable income of families in the villages will improve with other, associated NTA programs.

The Australia Indonesia Institute assisted with the development of the program and with the training of the school teachers. It provided funding this year to enable a librarian from Australia to monitor progress in each school and to provide advice to the teachers, headmasters and the trainers. George Miller from Canberra undertook this task in November.

The village school library program is but a drop in the ocean of when one considers the hundreds of isolated village schools in Eastern Indonesia, but it is hoped it will be a model for a strategy that might be applied on a wider scale in the years ahead.

For further information, visit the NTA's website at http://www.nta.org.au or contact George Miller, c/o NTA, PO Box 677, Jamison Centre, ACT 2614.

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