INDONESIA: Plans for 'world's largest library'

The University of Indonesia, the country's leading higher education institution, has announced spectacular plans to build "the largest library in Asia, possibly the world".

In a country without a deep-rooted reading culture, although the national literacy rate is far above what it was in Dutch colonial times, this is indeed ambitious and possibly rather reckless. UI will be taking on a student body with much the same indifference to book reading as the wider public, although proponents of the library, to be built at Depok outside Jakarta, are optimistic.

Another problem facing Indonesia is a lack of trained and qualified librarians and archivists. Clearly, a library of this scale requires a large, well-trained staff yet the plans are for an eight-storey building surrounded by gardens. UI visualises 10,000 users per day while the student enrolment is 45,000 but some use the other UI campus at Salemba in Jakarta.

The size of the building would be equivalent to that of the excellent Singapore National Library so claims it will be the largest in Asia are not well-grounded. Funding is proposed to come from the state and from industry as the university hopes the library will provide a focus for industry-related research projects being undertaken by its lecturers.

Late last year, UI announced it would be extending research cooperation with BATAN, the Indonesian Nuclear Energy Research Institute, and the library will be an inducement in this. As part of the funding will be from the state oil company PERTAMINA, the library is expected to attract people from the oil industry.

Scepticism may be in order but UI is responding to ministry of national education efforts to increase the international profile of Indonesia's researchers and the university expects the library project will play a part in this.