UGM Library has its 65th anniversary today and it keeps improving its access to services and information. Number of visitors to the library is constantly increasing. According to the data, number of visits to the library in 2015 rose about 13.38% from the previous year or from 187,390 to 212,461 visitors. Of these visitors, 20,150 visits are coming from outside UGM, increasing by 134% from the previous year. This was stated by the Head of UGM Library, Dra. Nawang Purwanti, M.Lib., in her report at the UGM Library 65th Anniversary.
In addition to offline visit, said Nawang, a virtual visit to the central library UGM through lib.ugm.ac.id also increased from 309,406 in 2014 to 1,008,006 in 2015. Despite the increased number of visitors, the library realized that the students and visitors from UGM and outside UGM are the digital generation who already familiar with technology information and view gadget as a part of their lives. Therefore, they continue to subscribe to an online database, either in the form of e-journal subscriptions and purchasing e-database or e-books. In fact, the budget allocated for the provision of digital reference sources reached 12.5 billion or 83% of the total library budget. "The source of the references in the online database is provided to be accessed anytime and from anywhere," said Nawang.
She mentioned the progress in information technology slowly decreases the utilization of resources in print format. In 2015, there were 23,340 borrowed books transactions, it decreased from the earlier year which reached 23,883 transactions. In addition, the number of printed books borrowed also decreased. "The number of books borrowed last year were only 60,786 copies, decreased about 12.37% from the previous year which reached 68,306 copies," she explained.
One effort to improve service to the academic community of UGM is inter-library borrowing facilities to support courses across faculties. According to Nawang, cross-service through an intergrated system encourages sharing resources and increases the utilization of information resources available at all libraries in the Universitas Gadjah Mada.
Senior librarian, Drs. Ida F. Priyanto, MA., Ph.D., said that every library should be able to produce dedicated, insightful, full of innovation librarian or library staff who are able to give color to the profession that they do. For Ida, librarians are not just 'robot' who work and write down all the activities according to the Target Employee Work, "But those who have the adequate science-based profession, equipped with experience and strong skills," he concluded.