The Library World of Syed Hussain Alatas

Review essay written by Philip Harvey

Cover image for the book Libraries and the development of civilization, by Syed Hussein Alatas.

Libraries and the development of civilization, by Syed Hussein Alatas. New edition. Selangor, Malaysia: Gerakbudaya Enterprise, 2025 (Series in autonomous knowledge) ISBN 978-967-0076-55-3

On tour in Borneo in November 2025, my daughter Bridie purchased this book as a present for me in a shop in Kota Kinabalu. The author is a celebrated doyen of Malaysian sociology and politics, at one time the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur. It is out of this South-East Asian colonial setting that Syed Hussein Alatas reflects on libraries in society, in one of the last essays before his death in 2007, aged 78.    

I

This hyperactive polymath accumulates reasons for why we have libraries. “An important sign of civilization and awareness of human progress,” the library can be regarded as a depository of “historical memory.” A cardinal virtue of the librarian is tolerance and enthusiasm in promoting “different and competing opinions manifested in the books of different authors.”

Alatas was an international student and teacher, familiar with overseas studies where he could find, only in libraries, books and articles of interest and use that were not available at home in Malaysia, often the only copy in existence or ready to hand. Biographers speak of his voracious reading habits, mentioning too that later in life he built a family home with a vast library and study as the central and centring feature (pictured on the cover). In this essay he collects widely and quotes answers to his initial question.

He quotes Arthur Bostwick, to the effect that libraries “promote purposeful reading and true love of books.” They enrich the “inner life in the aesthetic, emotional, and moral sense.” Also, E. C. Richardson concerning knowledge, humankind’s image of the universe: “The task of librarianship is to help people acquire true knowledge.” Frances Clarke Sayers “argued that the reading of great literature can release the creative potential of every individual.” Alatas’ extensive range of reference is a living testament to his own argument that libraries serve to “enhance character formation, sensitivity, and intellectual development.” He practises what he preaches.

Meanwhile, the reasons for having libraries continue to vex librarians themselves. Alatas’ score of reasons have increased, changing meaning in a world that includes the paperless library, as well as the strange cult of rightsizing, or decluttering, collections now that everything, purportedly, can be or surely is digitised.

His own definition of a library as “an institution … based on the written script,” is foundational, even fundamental, though today the “written script” has broken the bounds of the book, broadening to include media at the touch of a screen, with reproduction formats that would give Johannes Gutenberg pause to think and even go for a walk. Alatas himself writes familiarly of the overabundance of books, with the hazards this may engender, e.g. challenges to absorbing too much information and the unhappiness of having to differentiate the useful from the useless. Such dilemmas keep increasing, with librarians and users adjusting, since he gave the original lecture in 2004 that is basis for the published essay.

That said, the changing expectations placed on libraries (and their librarians) have not changed the basic value placed on them as being good and necessary. They are places where social interaction and understanding will occur.

II

There is a special motive for Alatas’ thinking about libraries: the unusual historical absence of library culture in South-East Asia. His words are written to transform local thinking about the social and cultural need for libraries. He bemoans the lack of comparative studies and intellectual discourse between nations of South-East Asia, especially inside the archipelago of Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. He ascribes this lack to no shared common belief in libraries (state, educational, public), the place where such improved civilisation is made possible. The place where differences can meet.

The author experienced such library culture first hand throughout his life during his many study stays in Washington and Canberra, London and Amsterdam, where he observed that libraries are, amongst other things, multilingual. That is to say, books in many languages are held there, thereby widening and encouraging international conversation, improving understanding and connection. Libraries support thinkers and scholars who can read and write across South-East Asia on regional themes. Having more libraries will address this situation, expand the conversations, and deepen meanings, was Alatas’ prediction.

“Half a century after independence,” he writes acerbically, “the governments of South-East Asia showed no interest in encouraging a South-East Asian library in their respective countries, with the exception of Singapore.” He applauds the efforts of colonial predecessors, especially the Dutch in Indonesia, in building up libraries, and notes the ironies of this example not being followed through by those achieving actual independence. Alatas calls out this cultural amnesia by reminding his many readers of some basic functions of libraries.

Libraries generate new knowledge and awareness, new attempts to rectify a situation, new striving after what is significant in human life. They provide the sources of interaction between book and reader, and between the communities of readers.

“Another basic function of the library,” he says, “is for us to know our past history, our identity, and the changes it underwent.” Such an appeal sounds obvious to those who are used to a richness of libraries both general and specialist, but only shows what Alatas was up against in proselytising for the necessity of these institutions.          

He was a man of many parts and it is his life as a politician that we hear in the force of such concluding statements as the following: “In the non-Western world, library development is far lagging behind. I could consider this as an indicator of backwardness for the developing countries. All the pronouncements for excellence in university education and creative thinking are wishful utterances unless they are supported by excellent libraries with dedicated librarians, serving to complement dedicated scholars who would seriously draw the intellectual raw data from the library.”