We would like to take this opportunity to congratulate her for the work well done, with the setting up of Pustaka Negeri Sarawak and being chosen as the recipient for The IFLA/OCLC  Fellowship Award 2001.

When asked about her job experience, she said she first started becoming a “librarian” back in her school days when she did her Form Six at St. Joseph Secondary School. Then she went to do her Diploma in Library Science at Institut Teknologi Mara (1981-1984), she continued to do her Master in Library Science at Syracuse University from 1985-1986.  After completing her Master she worked with  a statutory body from 1986-1993 to set up a Special Resource Center for the organization besides being involved in HRD matters.

Later, she moved to Dewan Bandaraya Kuching Utara (DBKU) or The Kuching North City Hall as the Head of Library Division (1993-1997), then in the Quality Management  & Strategic Planning Department for the City Hall (1997-1999).  By the middle of 1999, she was seconded to the State Planning Unit to coordinate the Pustaka Library Project until it was formally launched on 31December 1999 and named the Pustaka Negeri Sarawak or The Sarawak State Library and was appointed as the Acting Chief Executive Officer last year.

According to Rashidah, there are lots of challenges and joy that come with this job. Amongst the challenges is being involved in the planning and setting up of new libraries for other regions in Sarawak. It is a joy to see lots of people coming over to Pustaka and utilizing the facility and the services in their quest for knowledge.

The professional goals for Pustaka, besides providing quality information service, is to create positive image of the library through good customer service, better outreach and community programs. The staff in Pustaka is in the position to initiate and seek on-going efforts to increase their services and collections, and they are getting  great support from the State Government.

When asked how does she feel to be awarded the IFLA/OCLC Award and what does she hope to achieve, she replied “It is indeed an honour to be given the award. OCLC is a big library consortium in Ohio and they have been successful in giving access of information to the world, they are the leading global library cooperation and provide economical access to knowledge through innovation and collaboration.  It is our hope that we will be able to bring some idea back to Malaysia and implement new ideas in our library services”

She added that in a way Pustaka has a headway start by creating the Union Catalog – to be shared and used in Sarawak and hopefully in the region. Pustaka have already initiated the Original Catalogs for local published materials and hope this would contribute to the collaboration with other bibliographic databases.

She said “It is our vision to have all the 9 Divisions to be linked and have access to information through Pustaka. Sarawak being the largest state in Malaysia, is very spread out with mountainous terrain and rivers. No doubt, it is quite a challenge for the government to cope with the needs and demands of the people especially in rural areas because of these geographical reasons. However, realizing the needs to become and achieve a knowledge-based economy,  the government has done lots of major projects and setting up Pustaka was a high commitment from the government, to accomplish a good library network in the State”.

She hopes Pustaka will be able to make a new paradigm shift in reaching out to the people living in the rural areas.  There might be a possibility of introducing the Mobile Boat Library because some of the areas in Sarawak are accessible only by river and boats or “sampan” are used as their main transportation. This would be of great service to the riverine community.

Her philosophy in life is to be successful in whatever she does, and being truly a librarian she hopes to be able to reach out  those who are information under-privileged, those who could not afford books or computers, so that they will not be left out in becoming part of our information rich society.

Her last word to aspiring librarians, “love your field and believe in it”.  She commented  that the advent of  new technology in the library has created unprecedented new demand for the highly trained librarians and they are in the position to make library services more attractive than ever.