Resource sharing among business school/institute libraries in Jakarta, Indonesia: By passing competitor issues

Transcription

1 Resource sharing among business school/institute libraries in Jakarta, Indonesia: By passing competitor issues Paper presented at Congress of Southeast Asian Librarians (CONSAL) XV. Bali, Indonesia, MAY 2012 By Elly Julia Basri and Mulyawati PPM Manajemen, Indonesia Abstract In their journey to provide an excellent service to their clients (i.e library users, especially the faculty members, trainers and consultants in management and business), three business school libraries/institute in Jakarta, Indonesia, developed resource sharing on library collection. Their main intention was to extend their best effort to fulfil the users need. The fact that their parent institutions were and still are competitor in their business, was not an obstacle for them to develop their network. The initial activities was started in 1992 and developed by PPM Manajemen, Prasetya Mulya Business School and IPMI. They enlarge their network in 1995 by inviting another two libraries namely The British Council Library, Jakarta and CSIS Library. Another business school library was invited to joint the network by early 2000, that is the library of Magister Manajemen Universitas Indonesia (Management School, University of Indonesia). Each library have been through the roller coaster of experience in budget cutting due to the economic crises. Having a strong network they could maintain providing their best information resource services to the users and keep their service work until today. Started from the early stage of their networking, they agreed to keep the resource sharing informal, in that there was no written agreement among members about their obligation. This experience shows that informal form of resources sharing is an efficient tool to provide information to library users. Furthermore, informal way of resource sharing can avoid tention among business schools/institutes, which by nature are big competitors in the country. Keywords: resource sharing; library cooperation; library partnership; business school libraries; management institute libraries; special libraries; informal networking; informal cooperation; Jakarta (Indonesia)

2 Introduction Providing the best services to the parent institute and its stakeholders is a mandatory for any special and academic library. In their journey to serve the best for their parent institute, three business school/institute libraries in Jakarta, Indonesia initiated to develop library cooperation regardless the fact that their parent institute was and still is business competitor. Looking at the intention of library cooperation, Grove (1975) states an interesting opinion that library cooperation is often uttered as a symbol of goodwill, an intent to share resources, knowledge, bibliographical data, facilities and other fruits of technology, man s ingenuity, and the results of accumulated wealth. On the other hand, Swartz (1975) stated that Shared library resources and jurisdictions have prospered in the United States based on the assumption that more is good, and that a well-coordinated and well-financed more is even better. In the case of library cooperation among the three business school/institute libraries in Indonesia, their intention is similar to Grove s statement that the cooperation is a symbol of goodwill, an intent to share resources, knowledge, bibliographical data and facilities but not the results of accumulated wealth. They also share the assumption that more is good. The basic premise which stimulated them to set up a resource sharing activities in 1992 was driven by the fact that availability of information resource on business and management about Indonesia and written in Indonesian language (Bahasa) was scarce in the early 90 s. Because of this, the library cooperation would accumulate more resources to share among them. In his article entitled Prologue to library cooperation, Krauss (1975) stated that the definitions of library cooperative projects are far from clear, and consequently no generally accepted taxonomy exists. He categorizes library cooperation activities into 5 aspects, namely: interlibrary lending, bibliographical access, specialization agreements, cooperative processing, and organization for cooperation. Regarding library cooperation among three business school/institute libraries in Jakarta, Indonesia, at the initial stage they stated clearly that aspects of their cooperation focuses on interlibrary lending and cooperative processing of union catalog. The purpose of this paper is to share and discuss the authors experience in managing informal resource sharing activities among business school/institute library in Jakarta,

3 Indonesia since Along the way, members of this cooperation is even bigger because some business school libraries incorporated in the library cooperation. Members of library cooperation includes some libraries in Jakarta, the collection of which covers topics on management, business, related industries, economics, psychology and social sciences in Indonesia and Asia. The partnership of this informal resource sharing exists up to now. Literature overview A number of study and writing about resource sharing or library cooperation mostly discuss formal cooperation or networking among university libraries or government department libraries be it at national level or regional level. To mention a few, Butler (2001) shows that library cooperation has been a key theme in the America profession since the late 1800s. Library Trends, 24 (2) October 1975 covers a special issues on library cooperation. One of the articles in the journal is written by Harry S. Martin who has undertaken a monumental study on library cooperation in the United States. In his article entitled Coordination by compact: A legal basis for interstate library cooperation, he examines one device, the interstate compact, which holds great promise at that time as a tool for coordinating interstate library services. The compact is used indirectly to support two kinds of library cooperation across state lines. This journal covers various issues on library cooperation such as a comprehensive survey, the Southeastern State Cooperative Library Survey, on cooperative library program which can be used as a tool for decision making; a survey on library cooperation in Latin America which finds an uneven picture, and user demand. As to the committee of library cooperation, Butler (2001) shows that in USA, The American Library Association formed a committee on library cooperation in 1880s, while the subject of library cooperation has been of importance throughout the late nineteen century and in the twentieth century attention was given to library consortia. Regarding library cooperation in Indonesia, Sulistyo-Basuki (2002) stated that the library cooperation in Indonesia can be traced back to the 19 th century when Bibliotheek van het Bataviasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschap produced a union catalogue covering the collections held by other libraries in Batavia (now called Jakarta). Formal library cooperation in terms of information network, however, was started in the 70s. Sulistyo-

4 Basuki shows that four information network at the national level was established in The network covers cooperation among libraries as follows: (1) Documentation and information networks in science and technology, coordinated by PDIN LIPI (Pusat Dokumentasi Informasi Nasional Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Indonesia) covering libraries in the field of science and technology. (2) Documentation and information networks in medical science, covering medicine and health affair, coordinated by the Department of Health Central Library. (3) Documentation and information networks in agriculture, coordinated by Bibliotheca Bogoriensis in Bogor. (4) Documentation and information networks in social science and humanities, coordinated by the (National) Museum Library. The objectives of those information networks were: (a) to collect and process information, in any forms needed for the policy, research, education programs and information needs in general. (b) to provide information material and provide the needed information to users; to disseminate selected information. Sulistyo-Basuki also mentions that another 30 formal information networks were developed in Indonesia. According to his observation, information networks which can maintain their resource sharing activities are mostly libraries in the field of science and technology, medical and agricultural fields. Whereas activities of their counterpart in the field of humanities and social sciences are not functioning well. Concerning informal library resource sharing, however, the authors failed to obtain some references discussing issues related to informal library cooperation in Indonesia. A few writing was found which discusses issues on informal information networking in USA, that is an article written by Harry S. Martin (1975: p. 192) who states that: In the past, library cooperative endeavors have tended to be informal, local arrangements among similar types of libraries. There is some indication that the patterns of the past will not meet the needs of the future. Recent developments indicate a trend toward more formal, even governmental, connections among different types of libraries over a geographically large area.

5 Definition of terminology Mishra (2000) states that resource sharing is a sort of implied agreement amongst participating libraries wherein each participant is willing to share its resource to other members and in turn are privileged to share the resources of its partners and when the need arises. This definition fits to the principle of library cooperation run by the three business school/institute libraries in Jakarta, Indonesia. Each library is willing to share its resource to other member when the need arises and all of them extend their best effort to help one another. Regarding terminology, the term information resource sharing, information networking, library networking and library cooperation in this paper are used interchangeably to describe cooperation and partnership in libraries. A brief history about library cooperation among business schools/institute libraries in Indonesia Initial networking Resource sharing activities were initiated by three business school/institute libraries in Indonesia namely PPM Manajemen, IPMI Business School and Prasetya Mulya Business School. By nature parent institution of these libraries have similarities and differences of line business as follows: Name of Organization Training & Certification Program Consultancy Line Business Business School: Graduate & Undergraduate Program Publishing PPM Manajemen V V V V Prasetya Mulya Business School V V IPMI Business School V V (delivered in English)

6 These three organizations are private institutions and can be considered as leading business schools in Indonesia. It is shown in the above table that the three of them have similar line of business, that is all of them run business school and training & certified program in management. In other words they are competitor in business schools and institutes which run management training. The competition lasts until today. Adopting marketing strategy term, they are competing in red oceans, where companies try to outperform their rivals to grab a greater share of existing demand. As the market space gets crowded, prospects for profits and growth are reduces. Products become commodities, and cutthroat competition turn the red ocean bloody (Kim & Mouborgne, p. 4). Information Audit: The Need to Develop Resource Sharing The fact that their parent institute were and still are business competitor affected the librarian attitude to develop library networking at the initial stage. Those librarians, however, were driven in position that they have no other choice except to develop a partnership in library resource sharing due to the following conditions: Firstly, they encountered the nature of their work that required them to provide information inquiries requested by the stakeholders in such a short notice. Secondly, information resource on management and business about Indonesia, written by Indonesian and the text is in Bahasa was scarce. Model of networking is as follow

7 The model of networking is based on the following: 1. Guiding principles: the cooperation is based on Mutual benefit: each library is willing to share their public domain library collections Respect: all members respect internal policy of each organization, for example they do not include in lending materials any source of information which falls into restricted collection Trust: the cooperation is based on trust for example all members should not violate their gentlemen agreement in lending the information sources to other party which is not member of the library cooperation. The purpose of lending collections, is to provide their best service for the respected institution, not to borrow any collection for someone from external cooperation 2. Type of cooperation : informal 3. System: 3.1 Acquisition a. placing order of different title of books based on the text books used by the MBA program, especially those used as additional reading b. subscribing different title of printed journals and different vendors or e-journal 3.2 Access of information: a. Union Catalog of Serial Collection b. OPAC after each library develop their website. 4. Organization: each manager/chief of library is the vocal point of the cooperation, who is responsible to all cooperation activities. 5. Financial aspect: No fee involved The cooperation does not involve commitment to share expense in acquisition or membership fee. Purchasing of library collection is under the expense of individual library not library cooperation. Advantage of Resource Sharing The library cooperation brings a great impact to each member and their parent organization in performing their business. The advantage of the resource sharing are:

8 It speeds up availability of materials requested through information inquiry. It is widening the range and selection of information resources availability. It enlarge availability of journal collection, e.g each library subscribe to different country report at least the cooperation can provide country report from three countries Economic crisis >< information service: when economic crisis hit Indonesia in 1997 all the three libraries were suffered from budget cutting. The library cooperation was a great help to the parent institutes because they still manage to provide variety of information resource to the users. Challenges in Maintaining Library Cooperation Keeping the network working need a strong coordination, energy and coordinator talent. Workload and short of staff are some of the obstacles that the cooperation has to face. Consequently, the cooperation was not able to continue some of their activities as follow: Developing union catalog: The production of union catalog of journal collection was discontinued since 1996 due to short of staff. The activities to collect the list and produce a printed list was time consuming and each library was not able to spare some time to undertake the task Three month regular meeting this sharing experience activities was discontinued since 1998 also due to short of staff Development of library cooperation The status of informal cooperation brought many advantage to the library cooperation mainly because there is not any obligation of financial expenses. Members of the cooperation then invited other libraries in Jakarta to joint the networking. The following libraries were invited to be members: The British Council, Jakarta the British Council library has a significant collection on management, the cooperation begin at 1996 and last until 2004 when the library was donated to Library@Senayan it is one of libraries under the umbrella of

9 Ministry of National Education of Indonesia (Kementerian Pendidikan Nasional Republik Indonesia). CSIS (Center for strategic and International Studies) Library, Jakarta. The networking activities with CSIS started not long after the library cooperation among the three business school/institute libraries was form and last until Magister Management University of Indonesia Library (Perpustakaan MM FE-UI), Jakarta. The networking has been started since Faculty of Economic University of Indonesia Library (Perpustakaan FE-UI), Depok. The networking has been started since Although members of library cooperation is getting bigger, the cooperation remains informal. Each member is free to request any information resource from the other member and the cooperation sticks to keep the guiding principles. Model of networking is as follow: Conclusion Collaboration among libraries whose parents organizations are business competitor, is possible to develop and maintain as long as it is based on mutual benefit and each members of the networking are committed to perform trust and respect. Further more the collaboration should be based on: No written agreement involved the state of keeping the collaboration informal will make the members secure. Number of library collection is not a prerequisite to

10 become members of the networking. There is no legal obligation among members which hampers them to maintain collaborations. Informal policies should be made in order to draw the line of collaborations. For example restricted collections are not in the list of lending information resources. References Butler, A. Hays. Cooperative collection development program in law libraries: Barriers and benefits. In Teamwork and collaboration in libraries: tools for theory and practice edited by Marc B. Silverman. London: Routledge, 2001 Grove, Pearce S. (1975). Introduction. In Library Trends: Library Cooperation. 24 (2), October Edited by Pearce S. Grove Kim, W. Chan & Mauborgne, Renee (2005). Blue ocean strategy: how to create uncontested market space and make the competition irrelevant. Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business School Press Martin, Harry S. (1975). Coordination by compact: A legal basis for interstate library cooperation. In Library Trends: Library Cooperation. 24 (2), October pp Edited by Pearce S. Grove Mishra, R.K. Resource sharing: the third dimension of library automation (2000) Sulistyo-Basuki, L. Information networks and library co-operation in Indonesia. (2002) Swartz, Roderick G. (1975). The Need for Cooperation Among Libraries in the United States. In Library Trends: Library Cooperation. 24 (2), October pp Edited by Pearce S. Grove