Rencana-Rencana/ At1icles

State Papers Collection - The First Two YearsKhaa Siew Mun*

Abstrak: Rencana ini menghuraikan usaho penubuhan sebuah koleksi baru di Perpustaka-anan Universiti Malaya dengan tujuan mengumpul dan menyimpan bahan-bahan penerbit-an rasmi yang dikeluarkan oleh Kerajaan Malaysia dan agensi-agensinya. Rancangan inibermula sebagai sebuah projek penyelidikan oleh Ketua Pustakawan dengan sokongankewangan Universiti. Ini membolehkan perlantikan kakitangan sambilan untuk menjalan-han kerja-kerja luar dengan maksud mengumpulkan bahan-bahan dari sumber-sumbernyasama ada secara hadiah, pembelian atau penyalinan. Koleksi ini kini berjumlah 4,338tajuk bahan unik dalam bentuk monograf, berkalo, laporan tahunan, risalah dan bukukecil, dan pelbagai yang lain seperti peta, carta, dsb. Bagi setengah-setengah judul, ter-dapat beberapa naskhah tambahan dan naskhah-naskhah ini akan digunakan sebagaibahan pertukaran dengan perpustakaan-perpustakoan lain. Maklurnat mengenai setiapbahan dalam Koleksi Persuratan Rasmi ini dimasukkan dalam sebuah pangkalan datakomputer. Sokonqan kewangan seterusnya adalah diharapkan supaya projek ini dapatdiluaskon ke jabatan-jabatan Kerajaan yang masih belum diliputi.

IntroductionIn many countries of the world, government publi-cations remain a basic and authoritative sour-ce of in-formation. Established bibliographies, lists of officialpubl ications and other such bibl iograph ical listingsare periodically published for the guidance of thoseusing such publications. These published guides toofficial resources are prevalent in developed coun-tries. 1

Official publications not only reflect the history ofa country but also the role played by the governmentin the process of development. The role of thegovernment is even more significant during a periodwhen the nation has faced political, economic andsocial challenges.

In the past 40 years alone, Malaysia has seen oneworld war; engaged in a long-drawn out struggle withcommunist guerillas; achieved independence from thecolonial regime; and after independence, has had tosolve a multitude of social, economic and politicalproblems These processes have resulted in a tremen-dous variety of official publications being produced.

*Ketua Pu takawan, Univer iti Malaya.

They represent a veritable store of information forthose researching any aspect of Malaysia's historicalor current development.

Up to this point in time, bibliographic control ofgovernment publications has been fairly minimal andin certain areas, positively primitive. With the excep-tion of a few departments, such as the GovernmentPrinting Department, the Department of Statistics,and some departments under the Ministry of Agri-culture, very few other departments have maintainedphysical or bibl iograph ical records of thei r pu bl ish ingactivities. Up to this point in time, it can be safelystated that there is no single library collection ofmost of, let alone all of, the publications produced byall government departments and their agencies.

From the viewpoint therefore of giving guidanceto the researcher into the official publications of ihcGovernment and to facilitate their access to suchdocuments, it has long been felt that a collection orgovernment documents be established which shouldbe as complete as possible.

ISee. for example, HM O' Government Pubtications, and titles in the Pergamon Press Guides to Ollicial Publicationserie, uch as T. Ku rok i,An tntrodtu: (ion to jJpcJ/7escGovernment Publications (1981); J .A. Dow nev , US Federal Official

Publications (1978); and I.E. Pemberton, The Bibliographic Control of Ott iciol Publications (1982), etc.

Kekal Abadi 5(4) Di ember 1986

Government Publications in the University of MalayaLibrary (UML)Up to 1985, the University of Malaya Library (UML),like most major libraries in this country, had been re-ceiving a significant number of publications by wayof legal deposit? or as gifts from government depart-ments. The classification and cataloguing practices ofall libraries tend to scatter government publications asa form of publication, since the intent of technicalprocessing is to collocate materials by subject.Lamentably, like many libraries servicing a big reader-ship, many of items once held by the Library havebeen lost.

All these factors have doubtless resulted in majorfrustrations being felt by readership when they are onthe trail of publications issued by one departmentover time; or many departments on the same topic,and more so when they are researching the activitiesof different government departments over time. In-creasingly, therefore, it has been felt necessary forsome library or other to establish a collection whereonly official publications of this country are put to-gether; preferably not loaned out so that at anyonetime access to all materials on related topics is madeavailable to any interested user. Constraints of space,funding, staff and energy have so far contributed toto this intention being just so much wishful thinking.By the '80s however, research activity had made theestablishment of such a collection imperative for ren-dering service to an ever-growing community of re-searchers into this country's history and develop-ment. The establishment of the National Collectionor Bahagian Koleksi Kebangsaan (BKK) at UML in1976, and its presence by the '80s gave additional im-petus to the plan to establish an official paperscollection which would supplement and consolidatethe image and services of BKK. In late 1984, theLibrarian wrote up a proposal as a personal researchproject to be submitted to the University authorities.It was felt that since the project would necessitatenot only close but also extensive work, that the workof collection at least might as well benefit more thanone library. It would however have been beyond thecapability of the project to collect for more than oneother library.

The library of the Institute for Public Administra-tion (Institut Pentadbiran Awam: INTAN) seemedthe most focussed library for such a collection. Fromthe beginning, therefore, it was planned that the pro-ject would collect materials on behalf of both UMLand INTAN libraries so that two collections would beestablished in the country: one being mainly target-ted to a scholarly or academic community; and theother being established for the. bureaucracv." InJanuary 1985, official blessing was obtained from theoffice of the Chief Secretary to the Government; byJuly 1985 discussions had already been held with theInstitut Pentadbiran Awam for til is project to receivetheir official cooperation.

FundingIt was not until August 1985 that the University ofMalaya released an initial sum of M$15,000 (against afull request for M$45,000) for the Librarian to under-take this research project.

By September 1985, a research assistant (MissKristin Cheah) was appointed, who is a fully qualifiedlibrarian with a degree in the humanities. In October1985, two students (Ghazali bin Mohd. Fadzil andOthman Hisham bin Ali) from the Institute of Tech-nology, MARA (ITM) library school were also ap-pointed to help with the initial pilot project.

Between September and November 1985, thethree staff appointed were given training, and to ini-tiate the project. They began by searching the Libraryfor monographic works published by government de-partments. These included special committee reports,census reports, economic development plans; etc. Bythe end of this project, the collection totalled just828 titles: the fruits of over twenty years of collect-ing by UML.

Pilot SurveyA questionnaire was devised for the use of a pilotproject undertaken in November 1985. This wasaimed at eliciting information from ministries andtheir departments relating to:

- their monographic publications

2UML is only a demand depository i.e. it has the right to receive publications only when a demand has been made by UML.It does not receive all publications automatically upon publication.

3Subsequently in 1986, INTAN felt that they would prefer to keep only a listing of all materials collected or available inthe UML collection. Due to constraints of staff, space and funding, INTAN felt that they would not be able at this pointof time to collect everything located. Duplicate copies collected by UML for INTAN are currently being 'held in trust' forthem; at some future date INTAN Library may also request photocopies or may wish to purchase titles for use at theINTAN Library. For the moment, until the collection at INTAN is established, it is envisaged that senior officers ofINTAN would be welcome to refer to the collection at UML.

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- their series publications- extra information on the establishment and

history of the department- their willingness to participate in a gift scheme

to this project.The whole of November 1985 was taken up with

the administering of this questionnaire. The pilotsurvey also establ ished:i) the types of problems faced by the students in ad-

ministering the questionnaire, such as transportproblems (if any), responding to the questionnaire,and cooperation given by the departments;

ii) the useful ness of the questionnaire as a .neans ofel iciting information needed.The pilot project thus allowed the Coordinator

(the Librarian) to find solutions to problems dis-covered as well as to make amendments to the pro-cedures and the questionnaire. All preliminary proce-dures were finalised by the end of November 1985.

Phase I: Collection-building (December 1985)December 1985 was given over entirely to visitingvarious ministries and all departments and sectionswithin ministries.

For this purpose, ten more ITM library schoolstudents were engaged. The team proved to be an en-thusiastic and responsible one; and on the whole, theproject proceeded smoothly.

Collection-be ilding consisted of three major act-ivities.i) All publications located and could be obtained

as gifts were so acquired.ii) All publications which could be purchased were

also acquired.iii) All other publications located which could not

be acquired were requested on loan; photo-copies were made for UML, and originals re-turned to the government department con-cerned.

By the end of December 1985, only 17 (out of anational total of 26) ministries had been visited. Atotal of 109 departments had been visited; a total of142 persons contacted.

A total of 5280 items (including quite a few dupli-cates) had been collected. The collection comprisedmainly monographic works and serial publications(997 titles, or 4452 items including duplicates) to-gether with a few hundred posters, pamphlets, mapsand organisation charts (828 items).

~he project at that point in time had cost the uni-versity M$8,000. This sum however excludes the costof acquisition of the books/serials.

Phase II: January-December 1986It had originally been planned that the first sixmonths of 1986 would see the last nine ministriescontacted. The final six months would be devoted toprocessing materials collected; appraisal of the projectthus far; and producing a computerised list of thecollec tion.

However additional funding was not assured tillwell into September 1986.4 The balance of the 1985funding was therefore used to retain the services ofthe research assistant (Miss Cheah}. Thus no follow-up exercise could be done for the remaining nineministries. Processing work together with some'mopping-up' operations by the research assistant andthe Coordinator were undertaken through 1986.Some 'difficult' departments with complicated pub-lishing histories were also studied by the Coordinator.Gifts programmes have been pursued fairly vigorous-ly; and a few major purchases (mainly of annual reoports of government departments) made, to augmentthe collection and to replace items lost from the UMLcollection.

The major activity was the establishment of a com-puterised database for the collection.

As at 31 December 1986 the size of the officialpublications collections, or the 'PR' collection, as it isnow popularly called," is as follows.

Type of MaterialsNumber Number

of Volumes of Titles

Monographs 1,581 1,558Serials (excluding

annual reports) 2,240 1,080Annual Reports 745 691Pamphlets & Booklets 987 863Miscellaneous

(maps, charts, etc.) :212 146

Total S,7Gf 4,338

Composition of the CollectionGiven the manner in which the project has developedso far, it is hardly surprising that the collection isbasically a hotch-potch of materials.

Serial collections dominate: a proliferation ofsingle issues or non-complete runs of newsletters;

41n mid-September another M~ 12,000 were granted; bringing the total funding to ~27 ,000 so far.

5 For Koleksi Persuratan Rasmi: State Papers Collection.

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bulletins and serial directories of many governmentdepartments. These have all been acquired on thedubious principle universally understood by thelibrarian: Better something than nothing at all!

Monograph ic works, including special reports, arestill rather scatty, with vast lacunae in older materialswaiting to be filled.

For both formats, the collection is nearly totally'official' as traditionally defined, i.e. having emanatedfrom any government department. However a decisionhas been taken to make an exception for a very smallamount of materials which are either entirely devotedto a government department, agency, or institution;or give much relevant information on governmentagencies and activities. Examples are as follows.

Monographic works: Utusan Publications, Askar Me-layu, Kuala Lumpur, Pustaka Budiman, 1983; andAMW Communications Management, The MalayanRailway: 700 Years, 7885-7985, Kuala Lumpur,1985.

Serial works. These include the Malay Mail's Inform-ation Malaysia series.

The collection, however, is not entirely without itsmerits. By dint of careful bibl iography, franticsearches, and pure serendipity, it now encompassesthe following materials.(i) Census reports: of the S traits Settlements from

1871-1911; of the Federated Malay States for1901 (in microform); of Malaya for 1931,1947; and of Malaysia for 1970 and 1980.

(ii) The Ministry of Finance's Property Reportfrom 1978.

(iii) Bank Negara's Annual Report from 1959.(iv) A good run of the Malaysian Official Yearbook,

from the late 1950s.(v) A complete run of the Employee's Provident

Fund Annual Report, from 1952.Continuing efforts are currently being made to

study key departments in turn and attempt to obtainat least their principal documents.

Official CooperationUML would like to place on record our gratitude tothe many government departments which cooperatedwith this project; and to the multitude of long-suffering public servants who agreed to be inter-viewed. Many gave of their time and expertise;quite a few went to some lengths to help; some even

donated their personal copies of publications so asto allow UML to have a complete run! It is hopedthat such kind cooperation will be extended to us inthe future.

Further Phases and the FutureIn many ways, the project is still hanging. Somefederal ministries are yet to be visited; state depart-ments are yet to be contacted; and government com-panies or public enterprise companies are yet to betouched. All these had been planned for and are yethoped to be carried out.

Yet it cannot be gainsaid that the current collec-tion of over 10,000 volumes (including duplicates),collected in just over a year, has seen fair progress.Thus it would be a pity if additional funding is notmade available in the coming months to carry theproject along. One would have to wait a little patient-ly to see what 1987 will bring.

Exchanges & GiftsIn the meantime, the PR collection is ready to enterinto exchange schemes with any library (or indivi-dual) interested in this genre of literature.

Many valuable titles of official Malaysiana havebeen gifted to this collection: including various Malay-sian Plans; official yearbooks; and annual reports ofvarious departments. A list of those duplicates avail-able for exchange will be prepared by March 1987and will be distributed to libraries interested in ex-changing materials. Such libraries/individual scholarsare invited to correspond with the Coordinator(Librarian) for queries on the collection, as well as onexchange procedures. UML would welcome bothoriginals, photocopies or microform titles for ex-change; and would provide titles in similar formats. Itshould be noted that from this collection, only ex-changes of official publications from both parties willbe made."

ConclusionThe PR collection is yet an infant. But like all infants,it hopes to grow healthily; but with forecast cutbacksof various sorts, it is likely that future acquisitionswill depend heavily on gifts and exchanges.

Limping or leaping, however, the PR collection re-mains a felt presence at UML and all efforts possiblewill be made to see that it becomes eventually a realresou rce point for research.

6 UM L itself has other exchange schemes for all manner of materials made from the Acquisitions Department.

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