Fifty years of Indonesian librarian’s response, criticisms and innovative efforts toward Dewey Decimal Classification notation 297 Islam: 1958-2008

Abstract

The existence of decimal classification in Indonesia has been known around 1916 together with the establishment of a library association, however, it was not known whether the decimal classification is a DDC or Universal Decimal Classification (UDC). The first known DDC used in Indonesia is the 15th edition, officially used by the 1952 Library Staff Training Course, the fore-after of the present Department of Library and Information Science School of Humanities Universitas Indonesia. However, the first written Indonesian librarian reaction comes six years later, when Mr. A. Kartawinata wrote that the term Mohammedanism is not appropriate for Islam and proposed the expansion of the notation 297. Alas he didn’t used the 15th edition but the Abridged version of UDC owing the scarcity of DDC version at that time and the spread of UDC, thanks to widely-accepted opinion that UDC is more proper for special libraries than for academic or public ones. Owing to the following political and economic crises that hit Indonesia in early and late 1960s, no significant library activities were conducted during that difficult decades. In 1973, the government launched The International Book Year whose activities including library seminars on classification. At that time, Indonesian librarians concluded that the existing notation 297 appeared in DDC 18th edition is not enough to cover all Islamic aspects, hence they formed a committee to revised the 297 notation. For years no activities were heard until the Indonesian Islam Central Library in Jakarta published an adaptation of DDC notation and expanded it in 1985. A possibility of using 220 – 289 for Islam while substituting 297 for Christianity was rejected because of its impossibility, instead the Indonesian librarian favored the existing notation 297. In 1987 there was a joint declaration between Minister of Religious Affairs and Minister of Education and Culture which formally accepted an adaptation and expansion of DDC. This version is widely used especially in public and Islamic-based-schools, Islamic higher education institutions, Islamic colleges but not in non-Islamic-denomination academic, and schools as well as special libraries. Another version is proposed by the State Islamic University Syarif Hidayatullah in Jakarta, alas, its dissemination is limited meanwhile non-Islamic-denomination academic and school libraries as well as special libraries stick to the existing DDC notation 297 with its revision in the following editions. In 2005 the National Library of Indonesia (hereafter called NLI) issued its version based on 297 albeit its main notation for Islam are different from the DDC version. The NLI version is not compatible with the current DDC 22 edition. Historically, the Indonesian librarian has expressed their disagreement toward DDC for more than half centuries but their opinion possibly not heard by the DDC editors for certain reasons. With that matter, it is proposed that the future DDC revision notation 297, should involve the Muslim librarians from various countries co-operating with OCLC as the publisher and these conference could participate better in the coming DDC edition, especially for notation 297.