We shout about being on the Net ourselves. Then examine unsuspected riches at the National Library of Australia. And ask: what happened to apakabar?

Inside Indonesia

Inside Indonesia at last enters the real, or should I say the virtual, world of the Internet! Our homepage is at:http://www.insideindonesia.org. Put it among your favourites, it will often have new material.

There are a couple of articles from every issue beginning with January 1997, including this one. Not all - we want you to buy the mag! There is a complete index going back to the first issue in 1983. Most back issues, incidentally, are still for sale at our Melbourne office.

Then there is an additional service not available in the magazine. Digests are short, newsy items with commentary on contemporary Indonesian issues. They appear approximately once a fortnight.

We have more ideas on what else might go there, and would love to hear from you on others. What do you think about a research exchange, for people working on Indonesia-related projects to find one another?

The site, by the way, was designed by Helene van Klinken (yes, we are related...).

Library

The National Library of Australia is not merely a Greek temple of learning whose reflection ripples impressively in Lake Burley Griffin. It also has a magnificent homepage on Indonesia:http://www.nla.gov. au/1/asian/indo/. These people are eager to help - take a look.

The library's reps in Jakarta send back hundreds of boxes of new material to Canberra each year. Look up their acquisition lists here for the latest. Otherwise, telnet to their computerised catalogue at janus.nla.gov.au. They also have the best colonial material on Indonesia in Australia.

For me the most fascinating is the section on the library's Indonesian film. David Hanan supplies notes on dozens of them, as well as a bibliography. The library already has the most extensive film collection outside Indonesia. It promises to get more (such as Secangkir kopi pahit and Tjut Nya Dien) - if we all would only use them more often!

There are also links to many other Indonesia-related sites - intelligently selected, tightly organised - everything from bird lists to the stock exchange.

Apakabar

Whatever happened to the free news and discussion mailing list Indonesia-L, also known as apakabar? After the mainstream Indonesian press gave this free service some coverage, so many new subscribers joined up that it overwhelmed the software and made further mailing impractical.

However, good came out of bad. The discussion continues, but on a Web site (two actually), so people now come and get it themselves. Tens of thousands - far more than ever subscribed to the mailing list - are doing exactly that.

The main reason they go there, probably, is to read the 'unofficial' news. Anonymous news services such as SiaR, Bergerak!, Pipa, Istiqlal, Golput News, and Kabar dari Pijar here offer sometimes bombastic but often apparently accurate versions of delicious stories like Suharto's secret marriage to a Chinese woman.

You can find Indonesia-L at http://www.indopubs.co m/archives or at http://www.uni-stuttgart.de:81/indonesia/news/index.html.

The Stuttgart site has been holding the latest one or two weeks of Indonesia-L for a couple of years. Designed by some Indonesian volunteers who want to remain anonymous, it allows you to grab a whole day's worth in a single 'digest' form.

The Indopubs site has the same material, going back a little further. Its Hypermail software allows you to sort it in different ways. The whole lot is still archived in the searchable database gopher: //gopher.igc.apc.org:2998/7REG-INDONESIA.

To contribute to Indonesia-L, send your tuppence worth to John MacDougall at apakabar@clark.net. He can also tell you how to get more Indonesian news sent to you by paying for it.

New

All sites mentioned in the Indonesia on the Net columns can now be reached from our new, regularly updated, Springboard.


Gerry van Klinken