Bill Library Quo Vadis?

By the facts taken from this site Romi Febriyanto Saputro

This paper has been published in the daily Republika, March 13, 2007

Plenary meeting of the House of Representatives building in the DPR / MPR Jakarta, on Tuesday, 23 January 2007, led by Vice Chairman of the House of Representatives, Muhaimin Iskandar approve the bill as a library initiatives proposed in the House of Representatives for the Government to be passed Act (Act).
-Wing faction in the House to convey views of the end of the ratification bill is related. All the faction to approve the bill on the Library is set to become law so that a plenary meeting to run smoothly (Media Indonesia, January 24, 2007)
Library Bill be by the depth of concern about the condition of libraries in the ground water. Indifference to the library occurred in almost all areas of life.
Education has long been our role to leave the library. Learning in schools is left running without adequate support for the library. Libraries are often symbolized as "it education."
Ironically, the world has tens of years without running the national education "heart". As a result, our education work better as a factory certification. The education we have failed to stimulate the growth of learning to read and relish the students.
The effect of regional autonomy for the government to accelerate development in the region, lead to obscure the central and local authorities in the field of libraries.
Commentary by the diversity of the library of local governments - both provincial and disrupt the kabupaten/kota- empowerment efforts in the area of the library. Regional autonomy create the position of the public library more marginalized.
Bill Library, which consists of 25 chapter and 57 articles has a goal to provide a clear legal umbrella for development and the development of libraries in the ground water.
During not regulated by law apart, the existence of the library will only dihukumi with "sunah" studios. Bill Library is expected to make the government more serious build the world's libraries equal to other development sectors.
The outline of this bill have to give answers to various problems around the library. However, after reading the contents, the bill is felt less bite. The content is too flat. Have not touched the root of the problem is fundamental.
The author captures some weaknesses, first, aspects of institution / organization. Bill is only set the normative institutional library. During this institutional aspects of the library is still not clear, is still riding on other legislation.
Bill spiked to more explicitly the need to determine the status echelon for each type of library. Public library provincial shaped body (echelon II A), a public library district / city shaped office (echelon III A), a public library district shaped UPTD (echelon IVA), the village library and school bereselon IV B. With these rules library will be more attention by the local government ..
Second, the budget. Bill is only set the budget allocation for school libraries and universities. For the second type of library is defined as 5% of the budget the school / college.
Bill is sure to set the budget allocation for the library provinces, districts, subdistricts and villages. So that libraries can do a lot of areas, the budget for the library area also need to set at least 5% of the budget.
Third, human resources. Article 37 states that the library staff consists of labor and non-librarian librarian associated with the library, documentation, and information.
Again, the bill is sure to touch the heart of a problem. Currently the problem is that local governments do not have the good intention to open a librarian for the formation of public library districts, subdistricts, villages, and schools.
In each of CPNS, only a handful of district / city governments to open the formation of a librarian. It is the only public library for the district / city, while for the school library to this day "has not been heard." School library is still a "business casual" of a language teacher who already have a lot of the burden in their work.
To that end, this bill must emphasize that the district / city governments are obliged to take all the energy librarian for the library owned by local governments. Besides the need to set the composition of energy and non-librarian librarian as much as 70: 30 percent. Currently, the number of librarian is still quite rare, and even many libraries that do not have a special energy librarian.
Fourth, the collection. Currently, the number of library collections in the ground water average is not comparable with the mission to increase public interest in reading. Public library district / city with a population of 700,000's 900,000 people on average have only a collection of numbers below the 100,000 books by adding the number of books per year less than 10,000 books.
Article 13 bill is too flat because it just requires the government to support the development of the program library collections. If only provides collection, the government has already done so. The problem is the amount budgeted government collection is not sufficient to improve the reading public interest.
Library Bill must set the amount of the collection is ideal for a library. For example, to the public library district / city: the number of collections is at least a third of the number of people with the addition of collections per year like the population. For the school library: a collection of the amount is at least ten times the number of students, with the addition of new collections per year like the number of students.
Without such provisions, this bill will only become a mere paper tiger. In addition, the number of collections that are not adequate will also complicate the librarian in collecting credit figures. Not a domino effect?
Bill libraries should be made clear by the language and more "spiked". Because, if too normative and the public will rise to slit-slit law for local government in order to avoid the obligation to promote the world's libraries.
I really, National Library has dissipate golden opportunity for the Library Bill powerfull.