"Surabaya Memory" at A Glance

The rapid development of Surabaya as an industrialized city has brought enormous impacts on the life of its inhabitants as well as the city. Economic considerations have often conquered other aspects such as social and cultural aspects of the city and the city dwellers. This condition has lead to the desolation / alienation of its people from their own social and cultural heritage.

This condition is embittered by the absence of a systematic and integrated approach to document and preserve the city's and its people's heritage, either by the city government or by the society itself. It is no surprise to find out that currently, the extensive record about the city of Surabaya might only be found in Oud Soerabaia (Old Surabaya) and Nieuw Soerabaia (New Surabaya) by Von Faber. An initiative is urgent enough to be carried out to improve the condition and to make people aware if such effort is very important. As an academic community, Petra Christian University feels obliged to lead an initiative on this subject.

On the occasion of the 708th Anniversary of Surabaya city, Petra Christian University takes the initiative to commence the efforts of documenting and preserving the Surabaya city's heritage in a systematical, integrated and participatory approach, called the "Surabaya Memory" project. The initiative will encourage public and government participation to contribute their personal or institutional collection of the city's heritage to form an extensive knowledge base of the Surabaya city's heritage.

This approach has been made possible by the development of digital library of Petra Christian University. One of the main features of this digital library is to provide facilities to encourage users to publicly
share the knowledge they have. This approach will have another virtuous effect, which is slowly transform the people of Surabaya and the people of Indonesia as a whole. They will become members of an information-producing society instead of an information-consuming society.

The digital library will also provide a much broader access to information for the society, which in turn will participate in the development of the digital collection. This snowballing effect will guarantee the success of such approach. In the end, the digital collection itself will be not developed alone by librarians, but will be developed by and through the society as the true owner of the heritage.


The Library of Petra Christian University