Message from the AUN Director, Dr Piniti Ratananukul

Since the 2nd AUN Board of Trustees Meeting in June 1997, the ASEAN University Network (AUN) has been tasked to enhance information networking among Member Universities in order to facilitate information dissemination and collaboration.

As an immediate step, we had developed an AUN homepage with hyperlinks to the homepages of Member Universities at http://www.aun-sec.org/. For our long-term objective, we aim to explore possibilities of developing a virtual university through a number of complementary activities such as online courseware ASEAN Studies Programme. We do wish to push forward the AUN’s ASEAN Studies Programme into online learning and virtual classroom in the future.

Indeed, the proposed ASEAN Virtual University intends to incorporate both active learning forum and virtual mode of education and delivery based on existing network of collaboration and available resources and facilities among AUN Member Universities. The ICT will be extensively used in teaching and learning process in order to pool together the competencies of participating universities and scholars, as well as to increase educational resources without having to commensurately increase physical and human resources.

In parallel to this, we also initiated the AUN Inter-Library Online (AUNILO) as a supporting activity to realise the Virtual University. This initiative came with awareness of ICT increasing role in all aspects of life and national development. As a major mechanism of knowledge-based society, education undeniably requires the utilisation of ICT to better teaching and learning.

At the AUNILO Conference in Manila in 2002, our Member Libraries shared their information on IT infrastructure, digital academic resources and services, as well as copyright and licenses. The Conference also explored the most possible way to share digital resources among Member Universities and yielded the resolution declaring our intention to promote HRD in ASEAN, strengthen our linkages and provide another channel of information sharing by initiating joint HRD programmes.

To push forward the initiative, we reached the Resolution of the AUNILO and the AUNILO Working Committee was formed accordingly. The AUNILO Working Committee then gathered in Singapore at their first meeting in April 2004, reaffirming the will to pursue the AUNILO. Also, the AUNILO Secretariat was formed by Universiti Sains Malaysia Library in order to coordinate the collaborative activities among Member Libraries.

Presently, we are also trying to develop exchange and training programmes for library personnel. All of the above activities are geared towards the ultimate goal of the AUN in developing the ASEAN Virtual University.

By
Associate Professor Dr. Piniti Ratananukul
AUN Executive Director