Librarians Discuss Manuscript Preservation During Southeast Asian Library Conference

From The Jakarta Post:

Librarians from all over ASEAN gathered in Bali to discuss ways to preserve and disseminate the precious heritage of ancient scripts during a congress that opened Tuesday.
They raised concern about poor preservation efforts that could lead to the destruction of manuscripts in many countries, with some of the ancient documents having become part of personal collections but not being well cared for, while some others had been sold abroad to antique collectors.
With changes in cultural values nowadays, there was less room for heritage, as people had become more interested in modern fiction, television broadcasts and the Internet, all of which had in some way brought a negative impact, said Sri Sularsih, head of the Indonesian National Library, during the Congress of Southeast Asian Librarians (CONSAL).
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Keynote speaker Agung Laksono said libraries needed to shift from emphasizing the value of their collections to emphasizing the value of their expertise, especially in preserving and disseminating publications as the nation’s heritage, by building digital libraries.
“As ASEAN will become a single community in 2015, we have to ensure there is no gap in human resource quality among countries in the region. Libraries and librarians play a crucial role in bridging the gap,” the Indonesian coordinating people’s welfare minister said.

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Filed under: Libraries, National Libraries, Preservation