Singapore Libraries Bulletin Blog : Library Association of Singapore

A commonality of interest to promote, preserve and make accessible Singapore’s film heritage was the catalyst behind the Memorandum of Understanding signed by the National Library Board (NLB) and the Asian Film Archive (AFA) on 16 Jan 2007. A tripartite agreement between the NLB, AFA and the Singapore Film Commission (SFC) was also established to achieve the joint objective of building a collection of films by Singapore filmmakers.

At the signing ceremony, Mr Rajendra Gour was honoured for his contribution (to the film industry) of the two earliest known post-independent Singapore short films that won awards at overseas film festivals. The screening of both Sunshine Singapore (1968-1972) and A Labour of Love – The Housewife (1974) drew much interest and laughter. The familiar images of Singapore in the past were nostalgic. Mr Gour’s family, including his daughter and grandson who live in the USA, turned up in support of him.

Tapping on the unique strengths of each in this mutual undertaking, AFA’s role is to evaluate, collect, document and catalogue this collection of Made-in-Singapore films sponsored by the SFC. NLB will facilitate access to this niche collection at the library@esplanade for public consultation. Comprising culturally important films from Singapore and the region, this collaboration will also ensure that unpublished local films, as well as rare and significant Asian-centric films can now be archived, preserved and shared among the community. Film buffs can also look forward to a series of film literacy seminars, screenings and workshops organized by AFA and NLB to promote use of the collection. Budding filmmakers who look to SFC for funding welcome this new move to nurture and recognize local talents.

For preservation at its best, the National Archives of Singapore (NAS) will provide expertise in film and video preservation, with temperature and climate controlled vaults to archive the original and master copies of the films and related materials. NLB will retain two copies of the converted films in DVD or other viewable format for heritage and access.

The NLB-AFA-SFC agreement is a promising start to:

• A new collection of quality Singapore films for NLB, including unpublished films that do not come under Legal Deposit.
• Public awareness and understanding of film heritage content and its significance to Singapore and its development.
• A growing collection of notable/rare Singapore and Asian films at library@esplanade.

The Singapore filmmaking community, in particular, the young filmmakers of today, will benefit greatly from this initiative as it streamlines efforts to preserve and promote local films. It will also ensure that local film heritage, which is an integral part of Singapore’s cultural history and identity, will be protected and made available for present and future generations.

With this partnership, the National Library will add to its heritage collection a valuable and unique collection of films produced by Singaporeans that have never been made accessible to the public. These are productions that have been made since the 1960s, many of which had won accolades in local, regional and international film festivals and competitions. For the first time in local film history, these will be packaged in a format suitable for preservation and public use, making the NLB-AFA-SFC collaboration a landmark partnership on film heritage.
Contributed by Barbara Teo and Lily Chow, National Library Collection Services

Most people usually spend Mondays slowly winding up for work after a weekend. However, at the National Library building, some librarians found themselves winding down early with a cup of tea on 22 January. On that windy Monday afternoon, 17 librarians, curators and professors, from art and design schools and museums, gathered informally for a tea session hosted by the Lee Kong Chian Reference Library (LKCRL).

The purpose of the event was to provide a single platform for visual art and design-related libraries in Singapore to connect with each other and chat for the first time on art library issues. Participants could then discover ways to tap on each other’s strengths, and work together to tackle shared concerns.

The invited institutions included the Asian Civilisations Museum, LaSalle-SIA College of the Arts, Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, Nanyang Polytechnic, NTU School of Art, Design and Media, Raffles Design Institute, Singapore Art Museum and Temasek Polytechnic. Five librarians working with the LKCRL’s visual arts collection also participated.

After a lively one-hour discussion, the group got to know each other’s arty pursuits and found common concerns such as retrospective collecting, creating information literacy programmes and promoting arts databases to the quirky art/design students. The event ended on an encouraging note, with a sumptuous tea of sandwiches, cream puffs and assorted dim sum at the National Library’s fifth-floor garden courtyard. At the end, the group agreed that the next step was to brainstorm for solutions to shared issues. This would take place in a future meeting planned for April to June.

Contributed by Alicia Yeo, Lee Kong Chian Reference Library NLB

“There is nothing that solidifies and strengthens a nation like reading the
nation’s history, whether that history is recorded in books or
embodied in customs, institutions and monuments.”
Joseph Anderson (1836-1916)
American Congregational clergyman and author

The National Library Board (NLB), Singapore officially launched Phase 1 of its Web Archive Singapore on October 18, 2006. The aim is to archive “.sg websites” of national and historical significance. This is the National Library’s initiative to record and keep alive the nation’s web heritage and its many cyber-memories for posterity.

The National Library embarked on the project of archiving Singapore websites in 2005. The goal was to create an initial archive of 1,000 websites reflecting various aspects of Singapore life and heritage, in order to achieve a sense of community, national identity and rootedness among Singaporeans.  This is achieved through the archiving of information that shapes the national identity. 

The Web Archive Singapore (WAS) has exceeded its original target and currently holds more than 3,000 Singapore-related websites that showcase various social and historical facets of Singapore life. Coverage ranges from the official to the academic to the quirky; from government administration and education, to popular topics like arts and recreation, carefully selected to be part of the nation’s documentary heritage.

The web is increasingly used as a tool of social communication and interaction. Over time it forms a record of events that capture the milieu of a nation, and tracks the evolution and development of our national identity. Archiving these records will provide an invaluable source of documented heritage for Singapore’s present and future generations.  This understanding of our past will impact our future. It will create a sense of community and belonging, communal feelings commonly fostered by a good and strong archive.  

Identification and Selection

Phase 1 started out as a trial and test-bed. We identified and selected 1,000 sites for archiving covering the websites of government and government-related agencies, schools, trade unions, cooperatives, registered societies, including sports groups, arts groups and clan associations, voluntary and welfare organisations.

Criteria for Selection

The following criteria were used in selection:
a. Content of websites are authoritative and has research values 
These are sites that document and give first hand account of the organisation’s functions, programmes and activities.  Examples include: Government agency or society sites.

b. Content has national and historical significance
 These websites or webpages record events of national significance. Examples include: Four Million Smiles and General Election 2006.

c. Content has social and cultural significance
These are the websites that provide insights into the social and cultural life of Singapore. Examples of such sites include those covering the arts and heritage festivals, societies and associations.

Web Archive Singapore Phase 2

The websites archived in Phase 1 represents only a small percentage of what is available in the Singapore websphere. WAS Phase 2 is looking at “whole domain archiving”, which currently consists of about 72,000 registered domains. This will allow us to capture a representative snapshot of the Singapore Websphere once a year, using facilitative technologies like GRID computing in archiving and indexing. 

Web logs (commonly known as blogs) are changing the way the Internet is being used to publish and share information. Likened to ‘public journals’, blogs are used by people from all walks of life to express their views, concerns and beliefs on a topic, event or subject. While some have deemed blog information as transitory, there are certainly research and historical values in keeping blog information if events or issues of interest to Singaporeans are being heavily discussed on blogs. In addition, bloggers usually categorize their resources with the use of informally assigned, user-defined keyword, a process known as social tagging. As a national library, NLB has the responsibility to capture and preserve this social aspect of the digital culture. 

Selection criteria again play an important role in helping us to identify blogs that merit archiving.  These are blogs that have the following characteristics:     

• The content is produced by individuals who are authoritative and/or are known in their fields of knowledge (eg: Air-conditioned Nation blog owned by veteran journalist Cherian George, Rambling Librarian blog consisting of mostly library-related postings by a Librarian)
• The content is produced by personalities whose views and works are popular in public opinion or provide a good social commentary, e.g. popular blogs such as talkingcock.com, xiaxue, Tomorrow – Bulletin of Singapore Bloggers
• Award-winning blogs, e.g. mrbrown.com, which was a finalist in the Weblog Awards 2005 and the winner of Asia Blog Awards 2004
• Owned by organisations or societies, providing an alternative place for members to voice their comments (e.g. youth.sg blog, Blog Us owned by Reach Singapore)
• Blogs of Singapore leaders or celebrities (e.g. Minister George Yeo’s blog, hosted at Blogspot)

Thus, WAS Phase 2 will focus on capturing the wider Singapore web and selective blogs so that Singaporean content are representatively captured.  NLB will periodically review its archiving policy to ensure that the policies remain relevant to the needs of its user groups.  

Contributed by Siow Lian San, Senior Librarian, Digital Library Services, National Library Board

The members of LAS gathered at Grand Plaza Park Hotel on 17 March 2007 for our Annual General Meeting. We enjoyed a sumptuous lunch.

Swets Information Services gave a presentation on their new product, SwetsWise Subscriptions.

The AGM started off with Sylvia Yap, outgoing President, addressing the meeting. She highlighted the main achievements of the Council in the past year which included:

• LAS Conference successfully carried out using solely the talents of its members
• Professional Development Scheme proposed
• LAS finances with a healthy surplus

Sylvia emphasized that a strong membership was crucial for LAS. She encouraged members to come forward to serve. She put on record her heartfelt thanks to all council members, committee members and leaders of the libraries in Singapore for their unstinting support and encouragement.

After the minutes of the previous AGM was passed, we dealt with matters arising. The main one being the IFLA Feasibility Study. There were significant changes to the IFLA bidding process which largely included the appointment of a professional conference organizer. After due consideration, the meeting agreed to LAS putting in a bid for the IFLA Conference.

The next item the meeting agreed to the renaming of the Building Fund to Development Fund.

The Professional Development Scheme generated the most debate. Everyone agreed that professional development was important but some were not in favour of the way the scheme had been proposed to be implemented. It was agreed to study the scheme further and to incorporate the concerns of members. It was agreed that the LAS Council would make a decision on the revised scheme after due consultation with members.

Choy Fatt Cheong recorded his thanks to Sylvia Yap and her council for their excellent work. He saw remarkable changes in LAS under her leadership. Dr Varaprasad also recorded his thanks to LAS for the go ahead for the IFLA bid. He asked members not to underestimate the strength of our libraries and our librarians who can achieve much when they put their minds to it.

The election for the next LAS Council was conducted next and there were enough nominations for a full council. The new council comprises:

• Ngian Lek Choh, President
• Pushpa Leow, Vice-President
• Kris Lim, Honorary Secretary
• Tey Lin Lin, Honorary Treasurer
• Cumaraswamy Mukunthan, Assistant Honorary Secretary
• Kho Su Yian, Council Member
• M Shaheen Majid, Council Member
• Catherine Tan, Council Member
• Tan Lay Tin, Council Member
• Wan Ho Wah, Council Member

Ngian Lek Choh addressed the meeting as the President-Elect. She viewed the IFLA bid as a channel for professional development and as a way for librarians to come together. For the Professional Development Scheme, she would ensure that all views were heard and to get the best scheme going. She would set up a taskforce to solicit feedback to ensure that LAS is relevant and useful to younger members. She also hoped to sow the seeds for greater cooperation between libraries and librarians and looks forward to the cooperation of members in the next two years of her term.

Contributed by Yeo Pin Pin

Libraries the world over are facing financial challenges in collection build-up; one obvious way to address this is to establish some form of resource sharing between libraries.
While resource sharing sounds good as an idea, the actual pathways leading to successful implementation are subject to various inter-dependencies and obstacles such as rights and distribution.

The National Library Board of Singapore (NLB) is pleased to bring you the 10th IFLA Interlending and Document Supply (ILDS) International Conference that gathers over 200 information and knowledge professionals and business leaders from all over the world to engage in insightful exchanges on the theme ‘Resource Sharing for the Future, Building Blocks for Success’ to be held 29 – 31 October 2007.

There will be 4 keynote speakers for each main block of our conference.

• Mr Mike McGrath, the editor of Interlending and Document Supply Journal will set the backdrop of the industry and paint the state of affairs and challenges facing the business of ILDS. 
• Dr Harald Müller, the Director of the Library at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law will share with us the issues faced by our industry and some of the experiences encountered all over the world. 
• Mr Mat Pfleger, the Head of Sales and Marketing at the British Library will be describing to us their experience working with 2 major search engines on the web Google and Microsoft and how the partnerships were struck, their journey and performances thus far. 
• Ms Ngian Lek Choh, Director of the National Library Singapore will explore some of the new ideas and consolidation of services experimented by the librarians in Singapore to provide new angles of business for ILDS.

Overall, we will be covering the background, legal, tools and future aspects of the ILDS business. Log on to http://www.nlbconference.com/ilds/programme.htm for more details on the conference programme.

Special Discounts for LAS members

LAS members pay only S$486 (a discount of more than S$150 off the conference fees) if they register by 31 July 2007 with jenny@singex.com.sg.

We have a variety of sponsorship packages available that are tailored to your needs. For further discussions, you may wish to contact Ms Fauziah Soeratman at Tel: (65) 6342 4270 or Fauziah_Soeratman@nlb.gov.sg.

Blog Your Thoughts
The ILDS Conference Blog is up and running! So feel free to give us your comments, suggestions or just drop us short notes of how you think could help us make the event a success. We will also be periodically updating information via the blog page so do check in regularly for more conference knick-knacks.

Contributed by Ang Ling Ling, National Library Board