Indonesia's National Library creates 100 comics from ancient scripts

Jakarta (ANTARA) - Indonesia's National Library (Perpusnas) has created 100 comics from ancient manuscripts in order to spread their content and messages among the community and attract the interest of young readers.

"There are 100 comic titles that have been created, and they are basically from ancient manuscripts. The reason for converting ancient manuscripts into comics is because we want its content to be more familiar to readers," Perpusnas acting head E. Aminudin Aziz said here on Friday (September 20, 2024) night.

At the 2024 Gemilang Perpustakaan Award event, he observed that general readers find it hard to read and understand ancient manuscripts, so it is important to turn these manuscripts into visual media such as comics.

"Creative writers processed these scripts into comics so that they become much more communicative, and therefore, young people are expected to be more enthusiastic about reading," he said.

He added that the National Library will continue to convert ancient scripts into other forms of media such as film and animation.

"In the future, we will try to make short films and animations. At the Language Agency, they have processed folk stories into animation videos in local languages, and the community's response has been very positive," he said.

He emphasized that library managers must change the image of libraries as places that store books and materials.

Libraries must become producers of reading materials, he said, adding that there are challenges to increasing the community's literacy index because of lack of coordination at the central to regional levels in holding activities to promote reading.