This room is empty, dark and dusty. Some of the ceramic tiles on the floor are broken. Lines of old books, newspapers and magazines lie on wooden book shelves, waiting, it seems, to be picked up and read for the first time. This is the public library of Badung — Bali’s richest regency.
Located in Mengwi, some 20 kilometers north of Denpasar, the library is managed by the Badung regency and is designed to cater to residents, employees and the public.
The building, which has a 100 square-meter footprint, is equipped with few modern facilities. It appears more like a book storage barn than a house of knowledge and information serving the almost 1 million residents in the regency.
Badung regency receives billions of rupiah in annual revenues from its flourishing tourist industry in addition to a healthy income from the agricultural sector.
The regency encompasses fertile Petang and glittering tourist hot spots Kuta, Nusa Dua, Legian and Seminyak.
It was a saddening experience to enter this poorly managed public library, which pales in comparison to the glamorous and extravagant Badung Regency Civic Office currently under construction in Sempidi.
Books are scattered on the floor of the narrow aisles.
A librarian said the one air conditioner tasked with keeping the building at a bearable temperature was fighting a lost cause, as the cavernous roof that towers above the book aisles is absorbs far more heat than the struggling machine can dissipate. It was no wonder
that visitors were loath to stay in the building for more than an hour at a time.
Library head I Ketut Karpiana said the public library, which houses just 1,698 books, needed to be expanded or moved to a larger plot.
“What can we do? The room is in this [poor] condition, and we have to maximize its capacity,” he told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.
He said the library received about 10 visitors everyday. “We used to host more visitors when we were still operating in Kreneng, in the down-town area,” he said.
He said it had been a difficult decision to move the library far from the city center to its current location in Menewi.
Karpiana said he was looking forward to kitting out the library with computers with Internet access, but added that the library’s budget had not been increased this year from last year, and was enough to cover only the salaries of the librarians. All administration is conducted by hand.
“We did not add to our collection last year, nor have we so far this year. We don’t have to buy books every year, right? But we will complete the collection step by step. We will propose a book procurement next year,” he said.
The collections of most libraries are updated every day to cope with the rapid development of news and information.
Karpiana said there was a chance the library would be relocated to Badung’s civic center in Sempidi, where, under the scrutiny of the public’s eye, it would undoubtedly receive the attention and funding that all libraries deserve.
