UKM News Official Portal

By Abdul Ghani Nasir
Pixs by Abd Raai Osman

BANGI, 16 Nov 2011 – The Tun Seri Lanang Library (PTSL) UKM will be getting more space at a new seven storey building at Lingkungan Kedua in its campus here in line with efforts to make it a world renowned research library.

Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Sudent Affairs and Alumni) Prof Dr Ir Othman Karim hopes the added facilities will be fully utilised by students and staffs of UKM. He was speaking at the Launching Ceremony of UKM Library Reading Culture 2011 here yesterday.

It is understood that the new Students Complex Building scheduled to be open early next year will house PTSL collections for engineering, education and information science.

He lamented the low reading habit including among UKM staffs. Based on his experience when conducting interviews for a promotion exercise of administration staffs, Prof Othman said he inquired from them the number of books that they read during the last one week, one month or one year.

“From the seven who came, only one admitted to have read books during the previous week. The said officer was from the publication unit and thus have to read almost all the books to be published while the others did not read at all,” he said.

Prof Othman explained the concept  in building the Tun Seri Lanang Library. A library normally would be built without steps so as to be on the same road level for easy access.

But PTSL was built with steps as it was felt that there was a need to emulate Prophet Muhammad who had to climb Jabal Nur (mountain) in Makkah to receive God’s revelation.

Prof Othman was representing the Chairman of UKM Board of Directors, Tan Sri Dr Zulkefli A. Hassan at the function. In his speech read by Prof Othman, Dr Zulkefli said he is proud that PTSL has in its collection two million reading materials including books, binded journals, media and digital materials which as from Dec last year can also be assessed on-line.

The digital collections include 73 data based titles on-line, encompassing 20,000 titles of full texts journal. This has enhanced the library’s ability to be among the top library in the country.

Dr Zulkefli said he fully supported efforts of the library to increase its collections by widening the scope of contributions for its Endowment Fund to include all UKM staffs as one of its financial sources besidesthe allocations it received.

“I hope more UKM staffs will support this effort to ensure a stable financial source which is consistent and continuous in the long term,” he said.

Dr Zulkefli suggested reading habit be instilled in children from young even from pre-school until university.

Libraries should then not only become an institution that provides facilities and services for learning and research but also to encourge life long learning and to be the main source of knowledge.

“To encourge students to visit and use the facilities and services of the library, it must have a conducive and interactive environment.

”Such a library will definitely help in producing a well-informed and knowledgeable student and also imbue a culture of reading in them.

Various activities to encourage visits to libraries including books sales carnival, activities for school students, information skills workshops for College Fellows exhibitions on entrepreneurships and others would help to inculcate the reading culture among everyone in UKM, he said.

He congratulated students who received the Knowledge Study Award from PTSL and hoped it would be a source of encouragement for undergraduates to gain extra knowledge from the library.

Dr Zulkefli also congratulated contributors to the Library Endownment Fund namely the Vice-Chancellor, Prof Tan Sri Dato’ Wira Dr Sharifah Hapsah Syed Hasan Shahabudin; Associate Prof Dr Mohamed bin Marwi and Prof Dr Zawiyah Mohammad Yusof who contributed RM6000 each.

The contributions qualified them to receive the Honorary Membership of the Library.

Thirteen students  who received the Knowledge Study Awards based on the number of books they borrowed and accessed to PTSL e-Journal Portal are:

Ammalina Dalillah Mohd Isa (Faculty of Islamic Studies);

Kee Wei Xiang (Faculty of Economy and Management);

Koh Whee Ann (Faculty of Social Science and Humanities);

Neo Rong Gen (Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment);

Ngoi Kuan Hoon (Faculty of Science and Technology);

Nur Hidayah Juhari (Faculty  of  Education);

Nurul Akma Abdul Rahman (Persatuan Mahasiswa UKM);

Nurul Saffina Ahmad (Faculty of Law);

Nurul Zubaidah Shahul Hameed ( Faculty of Medicine);

Ong Shi Ying (Faculty of Technology and Information Science);

Ooi Theng Choon (Faculty of Health Sciences);

Shiu Seong Jin (Faculty of Dentistry) and

Tan Say Lee (Faculty of Pharmacy).