November 26, 2025
JAKARTA – During a visit last Thursday to the Jakarta Library in Menteng, Central Jakarta, all five floors were humming with activity: Reading nooks were filled with visitors engrossed in books while long tables were occupied by students and office workers tapping away on laptops.
Most patrons hailed from the capital and surrounding areas, but the library, located inside the Taman Ismail Marzuki cultural complex, has also become a destination for out-of-town readers.
Hanifah Amalia, 17, a senior high school student from Nabire, Central Papua, said she was struck by the scale and quality of the facilities on her first visit. It offered what her hometown lacked: a well-funded public library with a comprehensive, updated collection.
She had hoped to borrow Madilog by Tan Malaka, a nonfiction title banned under the New Order that had long been on her wish list but was rarely found in Nabire.
“Bookstores in Nabire are very limited. And Madilog is expensive, so I wanted to borrow it while I’m here,” she told The Jakarta Post on Nov. 20.
Unfortunately, the library’s last copy had been checked out.
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Hanifah came with Nabila Putri, 17, a friend from Bengkulu who was delighted to find the shelves stocked with both new releases and classics works of Indonesian literature.
With no comparable facility at her home in southwest Sumatra, Nabila usually frequents bookstores to discover new reads.
The Jakarta Library has recorded a 50 percent surge in footfall since May, when Governor Pramono Anung extended its operating hours to 10 p.m.
As of Nov. 24 according to its database, it had logged nearly 750,000 visitors, around 10 percent of who came from outside the capital.
“This increase shows strong public enthusiasm for flexible, multifunctional reading spaces,” said Nasruddin Djoko Surjono, head of the Jakarta Library and Archives Agency.
“It also reflects rising reading interest and literacy levels,” he added.
Beyond libraries, people who love to read also flock to bookstores. Those looking for niche titles often turn to independent shops such as Patjar Merah at Pos Bloc Jakarta in Sawah Besar, a favorite of Muhammad Ilmanuddin Haqi, 21, for its curated selection.
“The books here are titles I rarely find in big chains. They’re more segmented,” he said on Thursday.
After browsing the shop’s politics and literature section, Ilmanuddin picked up a volume to take home: Politik dan Poetik dalam Sastra dan Film (Politics and poetics in literature and film), a collection of essays by Gadjah Mada University literature professor Faruk HT.
Debunking stereotype
From public libraries to niche bookstores, Indonesians continue to find brick-and-mortar spaces to discover books they love, challenging the stereotype that the country suffers from dismal reading interest.
For years, various publications have cited a statistic that the national reading interest stands at just 0.001 percent. Though this figure has often been attributed to UNESCO, the Post could not find it on the website of the United Nations’ education, science and culture agency.
The people interviewed for this article did not take the claim at face value.
“Out of a thousand, maybe a hundred like to read,” Nabila said. “My family, friends, classmates, all love reading, so the number could be much higher.”
Ilmanuddin agreed. “The desire to start reading is definitely there,” he said, pointing to a growth he had observed in the number of reading communities and book discussions he attended across Jakarta.
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Hanifah, however, noted that reading interest could vary in remote regions that had limited access to books.
Rejection of the oft-cited figure also came from Laura Bangun Prinsloo, chair of Tujuhbelasribu Pulau Imaji Foundation, a literacy organization, and former head of the now-defunct National Book Committee (KBN).
“It’s a hoax. UNESCO never released such a statistic,” she told the Post on Friday.
Laura instead said reading interest among Indonesians was in fact relatively high, especially in remote areas where entertainment options were limited.
But she acknowledged that access remained a real barrier: “Good books rarely reach those regions and when they do, imagine the shipping costs.”
If the government was serious about improving literacy, it “should provide public libraries and distribute free books”, she suggested.
These titles should go beyond religious and school textbooks, which she said did little to spark curiosity.
“We want a generation that reads because it brings them joy.”