Indonesia LIS Journals Strives to Survive

There are 23 journals of Library and Information Science amongst 1.170 journals published in Indonesia. All Indonesian LIS journals are covered in Indonesian index and abstract publications. Alas, none of the covered by International index and abstract service such as LISA. They also have not involved peer reviewers, whilst half of other journals sometimes use peer reviewer services. There is only one LIS journal that sometime published bilingually: Indonesian and English. The others are published in national language, Bahasa Indonesia. This language unites around 200,000,000 people around the archipelago. As a national language Bahasa Indonesia is used as formal language in education, communication in national level, and formal language for mass media. Those who live neighboring countries like Brunei Darussalam, Malaysia, Singapore, and Timor Leste can also understand it. This situation rooted from the fact that bahasa Indonesia originally is Malay and is developed by adopting local, Dutch, English, Chinese, Portuguese vocabularies. In case of LIS vocabularies this language adopts from English, it can be understood for library and information is a “new tradition” in this archipelago.  The main problems faced by LIS journal editors and publishers their publication continuity. It is not only rooted from financial matter, but also difficulties in inviting article contributors.  It is presumed that they think there are no direct advantages writing for journals. Indonesia LIS journals could contribute LIS world literature especially for specific topic such as preservation for library materials relating to its tropical environment. Unique preservation technique such as herbal pest control for paper based collection. There is also interesting method in information literacy campaign in a  society that has strong oral traditions. In this situation Indonesian librarian should have an active role in disseminating information to their counterpart overseas. Publisher should publish the bilingual LIS journals, invites overseas contributors participations.

Library and Information Science  education in Indonesia begun in  1952 established Kursus Pendidikan Pegawai Perpustakaan, literary means training course for library imployees. It followed by training course for librarian.

Comparing to general publications, scholarly journals is easy to identify: simple, no advertisements, it has a selective reader, scholars and researchers. The articles tend to be longer, rich of jargon sometimes using Latin words, tables, diagrams, and always using references, bibliography and footnotes. Authors in this kind of publication are a specialist and never use pseudonym, and always write their institution where they affiliate for contact with their readers through snail mail or E-mails.