Development of Indonesia’s National Digital Library Network

This chapter describes various technical and social issues in the development of the Indonesia’s National Digital Library Network (IndonesiaDLN). The success of the network was attributed to the use of the Protocol for Metadata Posting (PMP) to allow member institutions without a permanent Internet connection to join the digital library (DL) network, the use and distribution of open source software, and the application of the Network of Networks concept that motivated and permitted communities to develop their own DL networks that are integrated to the IndonesiaDLN. Such a network model and lessons learned should prove invaluable when shared with third-world or developing countries on similar journeys to develop national DLs. 701 E. Chocolate Avenue, Suite 200, Hershey PA 17033, USA Tel: 717/533-8845; Fax 717/533-8661; URL-http://www.idea-group.com ITB11005 INFORMATION SCIENCE PUBLISHING This chapter appears in the book, Design and Usability ofDigital Libraries: Case Studies in the Asia Pacific edited by Yin-Leng Then and Schubert Foo © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Development of Indonesia’s National Digital Library Network 39 Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. Introduction Budgets for libraries in Indonesia are very small and this influences their ability to provide information for users. According to the Indonesian University Libraries Forum (FPPTI), every university in Indonesia should allocate 5% of its budget for the library. A survey by this forum in 2003 showed that only five of 125 universities had managed to follow such a recommendation while 40% of them allocated less than 2%. With this condition it is very difficult for the libraries to achieve a standard set by the Ministry of National Education to provide minimum of two book titles for every course and to cover 10% of their students (Media Indonesia, 2003). Apparently, electronic journal subscriptions are also very limited at most university libraries in Indonesia. In 2001, the Indonesian Cyber-library Society (ICS) submitted a proposal to several big universities to subscribe the electronic journals as a consortium (Liawatimena, 2002). Nonetheless, the limitation of budgets and the lack of wide availability of the Internet access were reasons why these institutions did not consider such a consortium. Realizing this limitation, a librarian and IT professionals’ meeting was convened to discuss the development of a national digital library network in Bandung in October 2000 (Fahmi et al., 2000). The main goal was to develop an innovative and collaborative strategy to acquire, maintain, and share local resources. As the ultimate result, they initiated the development of a digital library (DL) network Figure 1. Map of the Indonesia’s islands that denotes the location of the IndonesiaDLN members