T

he Surakarta city administration has suspended the digitizing of hundreds of old manuscripts kept in Radya Pustaka Museum in Surakarta, Central Java, due to funding difficulties.

The second-oldest museum in the country has a collection of around 400 manuscripts that date back to the 18th century when the region was still part of the Mataram Kingdom.

Most of the texts are in fragile condition and written in the old Javanese script hanacaraka.

The digitization process is aimed at making the old texts accessible for reading by visitors and for this reason the process will include translating the documents.

Radya Pustaka Museum committee chairman Purnomo Subagyo said that the committee received
Rp 300 million (US$23,000) from the administration, but 40 percent of the funds went to paying employees, the remainder supporting the museum’s operations, including the digitizing process.

He said the committee could not allocate all the funds to manuscript preservation as the museum itself was having financial woes.

“Last year, a total of Rp 150 million was allocated to manuscript care. This year there is no special allocation. The Rp 300 million grant has been spent on salaries and daily operations. We even cut employees’ salaries to allocate money to the manuscripts,” said Purnomo.

The cash-strapped museum was temporarily closed for a week last month before the administration disbursed the Rp 300 million grant.

Despite the suspension of digitizing, the museum still maintains the old manuscripts with basic care.

Radya Pustaka has hundreds of manuscripts, with subjects including the history of the Surakarta Kingdom, wayang (leather puppets) and tosan aji (precious weapons) manufacturing techniques, the history of ceramics, a Javanese philosophical song known as macapat and dozens of rituals in the Javanese tradition. The two oldest manuscripts at the museum, which was built in 1890, are the Serat Yusuf (1729) and the Primbon Mangkuprajan (1755).

Just 70 of around 400 manuscripts at the museum have been digitized since the program started in 2015; with limited recording instruments, the process is a slow one.

The museum only has one camera able to transfer the analog version of the manuscripts to digital form. To digitize the remaining manuscripts, five such cameras are needed.

Surakarta mayor FX Hadi Rudyatmo said the suspension was temporary while the administration prepared a new management system for the museum. “There is a plan to replace the museum committee with a regional technical implementing unit [UPTD], to smoothen funding disbursement,” he said.

Radya Pustaka manuscript digitization officer Kurnia Heniwati said that one of the challenges in preserving the manuscripts was that they were made from European-manufactured paper, which was very delicate and easily torn.

As the digitization process has been halted, she added, museum officers were now cleaning the manuscripts instead, using a soft brush.

“Apart from the funding shortage, the limited number of translators and the poor condition of several manuscripts, which are heavily damaged, have also hampered the digitization process. The Serat Manikmoyo, an old 600-page manuscript, has been so heavily damaged that it cannot be directly digitized,” said Kurnia.