"There are a lot of old Indonesian
manuscripts overseas."
Photo document of old Indonesian manuscript. (ANTARA/Fanny Octavianus) |
Jakarta
(ANTARA News) - Around 26,000 old Indonesian manuscripts are currently held in
the library of Leiden University in the Netherlands, Indonesian National
Library spokesperson Sri Sulasih said here on Monday.
Sulasih
pointed out that the 26.000 is not nearly the amount of manuscripts in total.
"There
are a lot of old Indonesian manuscripts overseas. The figure of 26,000 is in
the Netherlands alone, not including the other historical documents located in
England, Malaysia and other countries," she says.
The amount
found in Netherlands is quite a large collection because the Indonesian
national library only managed to acquire 103 old manuscripts.
With that
being said, the Indonesian documents found in Leiden is 2.5 times the amount of
documents found in Indonesia.
"We
are finding it hard to return the manuscripts to Indonesia because the library
overseas have obtained these historical documents by buying them, which means
that they have already invested in its worth," Sulasih said.
According
to her, the Leiden University has only given Indonesia one manuscript, which
proved to be fake, and kept the real one in their library. " There needs
to be a substantial amount of money to buy the real authentic manuscript,"
she says.
Now,
Indonesian manuscripts cannot be obtained easily by libraries overseas.
Sulasih
says that most libraries will ask the country of where the old documents came
from, prior to purchasing them. This is a way to identify if said documents
were stolen or not.
Meanwhile,
according to Sulasih, the Indonesian national library is trying to gather all
the historical manuscripts, that are spread across the Indonesian region.
"We
ask for community libraries to collect historical notes, or even buy them if
they have to," she says.
Sulasih
also says that the Indonesian national library in Salemba currently holds 1
million books, 10.300 old manuscripts and 80.000 rare books.
Although
the numbers sound pretty high, the Indonesian library does not compare to the
British Library in England, which holds 14 million books, 920.000 journals and
3 million voice recordings.
Editor: Priyambodo RH
No comments:
Post a Comment