UNAIR NEWS – This year, Indonesian community faces new challenges of ASEAN Economic Community (MEA). The implementation of ASEAN free trade area should make Indonesian community ready for international competitions from ASEAN countries.
To provide information on opportunities and challenges of MEA, Library of Universitas Airlangga held a seminar “Career opportunities and Challenges for Librarians in AEC” on Tuesday, January 26. The speakers were Drs. Abimanyu Poncoatmojo I., M.M from East Java Provincial Employment Agency (BKD) and Juhaeri, SE., SS., MM., from East Java Provincial Library Agency.
The seminar was opened by the Head of UNAIR Library, Prof. Dr. I Made Narsa, SE., M.Si., Ak., C.A, and attended by about 80 library staffs from various agencies and institutions, not only from Surabaya, but also from other regions in Jawa Timur and Bali.
To welcome MEA, Indonesian National Library proclaimed the establishment of “Librarian Cerification”. With this certification, Indonesian librarians will be secured. “Librarians from other countries without certification will not be able to work here. A boundary is needed to protect Indonesian human resources. But we have to be competent and professional, to compete with them,” Abimanyu said.
There many benefits from the implementation of librarian certification, some of them are to convince the library’s visitors that it is managed by competent human resources, to help the library’s recruitment and its improvement for human resources’ based on competency, to ensure recruited librarians are competent, to help the library’s system of human resources’ career and remuneration based on competency, and to ensure and improve productivity.
In the occasion, Abimanyu encourage the librarians to improve their softskills and hardskills.
He also suggested Indonesian librarians to cooperate with other librarians from ASEAN countries. He affirmed that with this certification, librarians should be more professional and innovative.
“If our professional human resources are not well-prepared professionally, we’re finished. Librarian professionalism should always be improved based on their competency and expertise,: Abimanyu said.
Juhaeri, the second speaker, explained to the attendance that Indonesia is the country with the most potentials. Indonesian librarian should have certain standards to compete internationally.
“Standards are useful to promote positive changes on global issues of great importance. Standard is the keyword of competition,” Juhaeri said.
The librarian certification is aimed to produce competent librarians and to ensure standard quality, thus, make them capable to compete and face global challenges.
This certification is not like teachers certification which enables them to allowances, but it is to measure and observe someone’s competence in their field of work. But in the future, incentives for certified librarians will be discussed.
“For now, there’s no allowance. But it will be discussed and calculated,” Juhaeri said. (*)
Author : Binti Q. Masruroh
Editor : Inda Karsunawati
