Disaster Preparedness Program ofManuscript Collection: A Case
Study at Regional Archives ofCirebon, West Java, Indonesia

Margareta Aulia Rachman
Department of Library and Information Science,
Faculty of Humanities,
University of Indonesia

Background• Indonesia is a tropical country that is prone tonatural disaster threats.
• The natural disaster threats could impact on
many aspects of life, including the threats on
cultural heritage.
• Cultural heritage can be found in many forms,
including manuscript, temple, site, etc

Background• Manuscript is one of the traditional cultural
heritage with historical, cultural andinformative value that must be preserved
from any kind of threats.

Geographical conditions• Cirebon is locatedon the coast (inthe north)• There volcanic
volcano in thesouth (Cermaimountain)

Cirebon as a Source of JavaneseManuscript• Cirebon is located on the north coast of Java,
which is located in strategic area.
• Beside that, Cirebon is also known as an area
which play an important role to support tradeactivities both regional and international.
• Cirebon manuscripts can be found in the formof lontar, daluang and european paper.

Regional Archives of Cirebon• Is an implementation unit area in the field ofarchive that aims to save the archive as
material accountability and evidence, both ofwhich created the Government, Agency,Private and public institutions for nation andstate interest.
• One of the archive collection is manuscript.
• Manuscript as a national asset in poor
condition

Cirebon Manuscript

Storage Room Conditions• Exhibition and storage
room without air
conditioning, and low
humidity• Physically, there is nopreservation ofmanuscripts. The
manuscript is only
included in the filebox

Storage Room Conditions

Disaster Preparedness• Definition of a disaster are all forms, events
that threaten the safety of humans, that cause
damage to buildings, collections, content,
facilities and services (Matthews and Feather,2003:3).
• The elements of a disaster preparedness plan,
including prevention, response, response, andrecovery (Harvey, 1993:123).

Disaster Preparedness Plan
• Developing a good policy is one of the mostimportant steps in preparing particularly
disastrous.
• This is an effort to rescue the collection as avaluable asset.

Prevention• The results of this phase is to identify thecause of the disaster prevention such asmanuscripts deterioration patterns, theresults of surveys of disaster risks and factorsthat may affect the damage to the manuscript
collection.

• Factors of manuscript collection deterioration
at Regional Archive of Cirebon
a. Internal Factors
1. Temperature
2. Relative Humidity (RH)
3. Light
4. Clean air with good circulation,
5. Microorganisms (fungi, etc.)
6. Insects and rodents

b. External Factors• Identification at storage room suggested thatin building storage room or building must
consider the construction• Materials which is used to build up the storage
room is material commonly used forgovernment buildings in Indonesia.
• Good air circulation and insulation at storage
room is absolutely necessary to prevent fire.

2. Response• Identified the supporting infrastructure in
Regional Archive of Cirebon closely associatedwith the storage collection.
a. Infrastructure Supports
b. Training3. Reaction
Based on a survey to the manuscript andphysical surrounding of storage room showsthat conservation procedures and techniquesmust be implemented to the collection• Wrap the text with a paper map. It will mademanuscript no longer interacted directly with
us if touched• Insert manuscript into the boxs to make it
more durable archive4. Recovery
Based on damage caused by the disastershows that recovery procedures need to befixed.
• Fixing a broken disaster site
• Creating standard operational procedures

Conclusion• Conservation programs in disaster
preparedness at the Regional Archive ofCirebon must follow the environmental
conditions and the environment storage.
• Good policy and written guidelines about
disaster preparedness in the Regional Archiveof Cirebon need to be implemented as soon aspossible.

Daluang

European paper

LontarBinding conditionsThank You