Over 12,000 Indonesian Books 'Pulang Kampung'
The government is set to welcome the return of 12,000 collections about Indonesia from the Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen today, according to a statement released by the country's embassy in the Netherlands.
Retno L.P. Marsudi Indonesia's ambassador to the Netherlands, officially received the books from D.J. Vermeer, president of KIT — an independent center of knowledge and expertise in the areas of international and intercultural cooperation — at the Indonesian Embassy in The Hague on Monday.
The government will receive books about Indonesia that were published after 1950.
The Ministry of Education and Culture will house the material until a decision regarding a permanent storage facility is finalized.
Following the closure of the KIT library, it was decided that the books were to be returned to Indonesia.
Other collections, such as maps and items of cultural heritage, would be relocated to Leiden University and Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde, an institute for Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, in the Netherlands.
"Those books are very important to researchers and the future of cultural and historical knowledge development in the country," said Achmad Sunjayadi, a lecturer in Dutch studies at the University of Indonesia.
While housing the books in Indonesia will provide easy access for scholars, Achmad noted, the government should pay particular attention to specific matters such as safety, management, and treatment of the books.
"Here, we have the National Archives and the National Library that have a special room and can provide specific treatment, as the books are rare," he said.
Achmad hopes that all the books, manuscripts, and other materials about Indonesia would eventually be returned to the country but expressed concern over the government's readiness for such a responsibility.
"I once visited KITLV and there they have a special underground bunker containing a lot of collections," he mentioned.
Asvi Warman Adam, a historian at Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), echoed the same positive response about the return of the books.
Moreover, he said he hoped the Indonesian Embassy had selected those collections.
"Why bother sending collections that are not important to us? The Indonesian Embassy should have asked experts to help them select those collections," he said in reference to the Indonesian government archives that were taken by the Dutch during the second Military Aggression in 1958.
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