I

t was only 9 a.m, but around a dozen young people were already waiting patiently in front of the colonial-style building of the Indonesia-Dutch Cultural Center (Indonesisch-Netherlands Cultereel Centrum) Karta Pustaka in Yogyakarta.

When the doors opened an hour later, they burst into the cultural center located at Jl. Suryodiningrat No. 37B to browse the numerous vintage-book collections that were being sold off cheap.

Tourist guide Yamin said he had come to buy books, but he was sad to see the closure of Karta Pustaka.

'I have been following activities at Karta Pustaka since 1974,' he said while picking up a couple of books on Friday.

Meanwhile, freelance photographer Budi Dharmawan dug Rp 2 million (US$162) from his pocket to secure a 2-meter-high pile of books on photography, which he considered a treasure.

'I want to collect them because photography books printed between the 1950s and the 1970s are rare,' he told The Jakarta Post over the phone.

Bookworms, artists and culture enthusiasts who had nostalgic memories of Karta Pustaka voiced their disappointment on social media upon hearing that the cultural center was to officially close early this month.

Many of them lamented the loss of an affordable place to enjoy arts, cultural performances and discussions and worried about the preservation of the rare collections from the center.

From Nov. 30 until Dec. 5, Karta Pustaka auctioned its furniture and almost all of the entire book collection of around 10,000 books. Books were priced at between Rp 2,000 and Rp 3,000. Some encyclopedias were donated to the state library owned by the Yogyakarta administration.

Karta Pustaka executive director Anggi Minarni estimated they collected funds of around Rp 400 million from the auction. The funds will be used to pay the severance of employees and power bills.

Established in 1968, Karta Pustaka had grown into one of the most famous art and cultural centers in Yogyakarta. Besides providing a library, it also offered a Dutch-language course funded by the Netherlands Embassy and donations from other institutions.

'The reason [for the closure] is very simple; the institution's mission has been achieved. The patrons of Karta Pustaka, comprising nine people, took the decision in November this year,' Anggi told the Post over the weekend.

She explained that the cultural center, founded by the Karta Pustaka Foundation, had three missions ' to bridge the relationship between Indonesia and the Netherlands, to support and push for community-based education through art and cultural activities at the community level and to preserve cultural heritage.

She said after completing the mission, the foundation failed to formulate a mission or vision for the next 50 years as most of its patrons were already of a senior age.

Among them were former rector of the March 11 State University in Surakarta, Kunto Wibisono and his wife Utari Kunto Wibisono, as well as historian Djoko Suryo.

Separately, Djoko said Karta Pustaka was closed because the Netherlands Embassy, as the main donor, suddenly stopped its financial support this year.

'The Dutch Embassy could no longer give the support because they were also suffering from [an economic] crisis,' he said as quoted by tribunnews.com on Friday.

Anggi immediately dismissed the suggestion that financial reasons lay behind the closure saying the problem was the difficulty in finding dedicated and enthusiastic young minds to run the center.

'The Dutch Embassy actually is still interested in resuming the cooperation, but finding a new thinker, who can not only formulate a mission and vision but also has a great soul and sufficient time to implement them diligently, is difficult,' said Anggi.