S2E5: Reading Innovation at the National Library

Summary Keywords 

National library, public libraries, cultural preservation, digital libraries, RFID technology, community engagement, reading resources, generative ai, children's books, mobile libraries, literacy, knowledge access, innovation, digital literacy, library history 

00:03 Host, Loh Chin Ee

Ancient libraries such as the Library of Alexandria in Egypt and the Library of Pergamum in modern day Turkey were associated with their extensive collection to preserve knowledge and facilitate research. Papyrus scrolls covering a wide range of subjects including philosophy, literature and science were catalogued and stored on shelves. Reading rooms, lecture halls and gardens supported scholarly exchanges. In medieval libraries, books were physically chained to desks or shelves. Books were expensive and rare, and chaining them prevent theft. To read them, you would have to visit the library and sit there for hours, or even days.

In contrast, over here in Singapore today, we can walk into the Central Public Library or any of our libraries, scan a book to borrow it and take it out of the library. Even better, you can just tap on an app in your smartphone, check if a digital copy of the book you are interested in is available and borrow the e-copy, all without stepping out of your home or while on the go. While knowledge used to be limited to the few who could make their way to the ancient libraries, today’s access is more democratic with library resources available to all. Libraries are vital for cultural preservation and provision of knowledge, raising the literacy and cultural bar of society.

In this episode, we explore the history of public libraries in Singapore and dive deep into the inner workings of the National Library Board, a world-class institution that manages Singapore’s National Library and other libraries around Singapore. 

Chapter One: The history of Singapore libraries

Brendan Luyt, Associate Professor at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information Science, Nanyang Technological University studies information history. That includes the history of reading and libraries. He tells us about the core functions of public libraries.

02:19 Brendan Luyt

The three core functions for the public library, in my opinion, well, one is the access to knowledge for the community that they're meant to be serving. The second function, be providing a window on the cultural world, so they should be including literature and the arts amongst their collections, and they are very important, just as important as science and medicine and engineering are at this window on the cultural world. And then a third function that I think is increasingly important in a world that's becoming more and more polarised is a variety of perspectives on the world through the process of collection, development and management. It should be a conscious effort to try to develop a well-rounded connection, not just in terms of subjects, but in terms of the perspectives that are given on each of the subjects. So it's all a matter of what you collect and being aware of what's available to collect.

03:17 Host, Loh Chin Ee

While the National Library Board, the statutory board that manages the National Library and libraries was established in 1995, the history of public libraries in Singapore began much earlier.

03:32 Brendan Luyt

The first key point would happen as far back as 1835 and that's when the Singapore free school was set up, and the Singapore free school included a library. It was open to the public if they paid a subscription fee, but it was primarily for the support of the school's teaching. That's the first point. The second is 1874 and this saw the opening of the first dedicated, government supported library, and the Raffles Library. Now, this was very different from the libraries we know today. It was elite library. It served as the core of Singapore, as a growing node of knowledge production in the region, alongside the Botanic Gardens, but it was also a source of entertainment for the English colonialists. The stuff was mostly in English, with the exception of historical works, which would be in the local languages. But basically, most of the material was in English. So only a very small fraction of the population could avail of the services, because literacy in English was very small at that time, but it's still an important milestone in the library history here. 

Then we jumped to 1923, and this was important for two reasons, I think. The first was that there was the appointment of a fellow called James Johnson, and I doubt many people remember him, but they should because he was the first professional librarian in Singapore. So that's one thing that was very important about that year. But the other important thing about that year is that it saw the opening of the first children's branch in Singapore, and that was spearheaded by James Johnson. And just as an aside, that's one of the things that we should be thankful to librarians, is that they've been at the forefront of developing specialised services and literature for children for quite some time. 

The next point, I would say, very important in Singapore's library history is the war, World War Two, simply because the collections of the Raffles Library survived that war. If you look regionally, a lot of the library collections were almost completely destroyed. If you look at the history of the libraries in Manila, for example, they were, I would say, 90% destroyed. Singapore was very lucky in that those collections were preserved by a combination of an Englishman and a Japanese E J H Corner, and his Japanese counterpart, Hidezo Tanakadate. So together, they preserved the collection something that wasn't always the case in the rest of the region. 

And then the final important point in Singapore is the early 1960s. This saw the scrapping of membership fees to the Raffles and then became the National Library. It also saw the development of mobile services and later branch libraries. And so, this takes us into sort of the modern era of public library service.

06:44 Host, Loh Chin Ee

In this modern era, the National Library Act of 1958 established the National Library as responsible for both the national library and public library functions. In most countries, the functions are separate with the national library serving the entire country, including the preservation of its cultural heritage and the public library serving local community needs. 

From the 1960s, library reach increased. In 1960, a mobile library service, sponsored by the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation or UNESCO was launched. Old army vehicles were converted into cream-coloured vans. Loaded with children’s books, these vans would visit primary schools, encouraging children to join as library members. 

In the 1980s, new full-time branch libraries in areas such as Ang Mo Kio and Bukit Merah increased the reach of the public library. In the 1990s, community libraries in void decks of housing estates brought books to children near their homes. In 1994, Tampines Regional library, the first regional library in Singapore was officially opened. Today, there are 28 libraries across Singapore. One library for every 25 square kilometres of land. You could probably get to a public library in 30 minutes or less via public transportation. 

To consolidate library functions to bring the library into the future, the National Library Board or NLB was set up on 1 September 1995. To tell us more about the work of the NLB, we have Gene Tan, Chief Librarian and Chief Innovation Officer at the National Library Board.

08:32 Gene Tan

There are three components, it’s the National Library, the National Archives and the public libraries. So, there are actually three systems. So that, in itself, is a unique formulation that a lot of libraries are fascinated by, because most of them are either a national library or a national archive or a public library. At most you have two, but I don't think anywhere in the world you're the three coming together. National Library and the public libraries have always existed together. In fact, we started our life in 1845 as a public library, and then the National Library came gradually. The National Archives came in in 2012. That was transferred to NLB from the National Heritage Board. 

Our mission and vision, it comes in a triplet – readers for life, learning communities, knowledgeable nation. But the three things that have stayed with us since we became a board was knowledge, imagination and possibilities. It's come to a point where it's beyond books, it's about possibilities. When you walk in a library, there are no barriers to your entry. It doesn't matter who you are, where you come from, who you know, and how much money you make, or even what education level you have, the possibilities are endless for you.

09:46 Host, Loh Chin Ee

We all love free things, especially when they are of a good quality. That is the selling point of the library… knowledge is freely available for all who seek, whether in books or in digital form. A visit to any of the libraries will reveal the diversity of visitors. Parents reading with their children, teenagers studying or borrowing books, working adults looking for non-fiction titles and using the discussion spaces, perhaps having a coffee in the library café. Seniors reading the electronic papers on a large screen or surfing on the web on the computer. There is something for everyone and every age.

Chapter Two: Innovating for reading

One of the main tasks of the library is to make sure that the library patrons can have easy access to books they want to read, and to inspire patrons to pick up new books. 

In the 1990s, there was a huge demand for reading and one of the key challenges that the NLB had to solve was how to get books into the hands of eager readers. 

10:58 Gene Tan

There was demand. These days, we call it the total addressable market. At that time, the market for reading was huge, it's just how to tap into that. So people read quite a lot in 90s, social media only came about in, I think in 2007 it was Facebook. So all these distractions were not there. So I think besides television, and even then, it was more cable and perhaps your mainstream channels and reading. So there was a lot more devotion to reading at that time. 

11:24 Host, Loh Chin Ee

A key NLB innovation is the utilisation of Radio Frequency Identifier or RFID technology to facilitate borrowing and returning of books. RFID technology makes use of electromagnetic fields to track items. It is often deployed in logistics track of the movement of goods. You make use of RFID technology every day, for example, for contactless payments, such as your credit card, public transport or if you drive, for Electronic Road Pricing or ERP payments. 

At the National Library, the RFID technology was used to identify and track books and other library resources. An RFID tag is attached to a book, and it emits a signal when passed through a RFID reader. This technology streamlined book inventory processes, reduced manpower required and allowed the library to offer new convenient new services for its patrons.

12:24 Gene Tan

I remember we shot the video of people lining up, and there was this lady who was pregnant, holding four books and looking like the most miserable person ever. It took very long to do that, so the first thing that we did was explore how we can use technology. So my very first CEO, Christopher Chia whom I had the pleasure of working with, as his assistant, started to explore RFID, putting the chip in there, you're able to check out the books electronically and return it to a book drop. And the second thing that he did was returning your books. In the past, he had to go to a specific library to return the book, and then you had to join the queue and be the miserable pregnant lady again. Since then, he created a book drop where you could read the chip very quickly, and you can drop the book anywhere in the entire system. So that took the pain of transacting and the pain of even traveling from one library to another just to return the book, that took away the whole amount of time that you need in order to just get the book that you want. This is like before Amazon was Amazon. It was a huge logistics exercise, so you have this Ninja Van-ish things going on, moving the books from one location to another. It was an operation that we had to do all the time. It turned out that our loans were amazing as a result of that, it hit like 30, 40 million as a result.

13:46 Host, Loh Chin Ee

Beyond print based reading, the library enables access to all other forms of reading resources. 

13:52 Gene Tan

We have to think about different forms of reading. First of all, so there's audio. So a lot of people who drive like to listen to books. Yeah, so audio books are actually a huge demand right now, and e-books, we did a survey in 2021. From the 2021 statistics, I think about close to 60 percent of people read e-books now, but there’s still a substantial number of who read physical books, about 70 over percent. There is that demand for e-books, e-magazines, so we got to go into that area. But also, we realised that there's demand for a lot of more bite sized content, so we created what we call learning packages on different things, like Gen AI and all that, so you can either read it all, or you can read it in parts. We also realised that people love listening to others and just taking it all in. Programs have also changed dramatically. We started our big programs, I remember there was one that I love very much, we brought Jackie Chan in, and then we had a resource guide on Jackie Chan. We had to find a page, a giant page. So Jackie Chan came in, talk about the filmmaking experience, and then we had a resource guide with all the content of all the content you can find the library related to him.

15:02 Host, Loh Chin Ee

NLB continues to pivot and adjust its strategies to help Singaporeans access more reading resources, even as the world shifted from print towards more multimodal forms of communication. With easy access to information through the World Wide Web, the NLB has had to rethink how to curate information, enable access to content and create connections through community.

15:26 Gene Tan

It's all about consumption. It's very strange to talk about that, almost a retail perspective, the libraries right now, the patterns have changed so dramatically. In the past, everybody read books, so it was very simple to land on what to innovate, which is to make the borrowing of books as fast as possible, so that the pain of transacting is taken out of the pleasure of reading. But now I think we got to think about how people consume content. They could read a book, they could read it electronically, physically. They could consume it through experiences, they could get in bite size, they could meet someone and get some content, or they could learn through being part of a community. These multimodal ways of learning is something we’ve got to learn, and the libraries are rising up to the challenge. I would say, in recent years that is the most important thing – to adapt to the content consumption patterns of our patrons. 

In the past, libraries will be "oh let’s built as big a collection as possible.” Now it's actually about connection. How do I connect to all the great content that's out there and to be able to link you to that? For instance, we work with SPH to provide linkages to their newspapers. We don't own them, it's not our collection, but it's something that we're able to connect people to. A group of librarians are working with me now on a special algorithm to be able to present content to you that you can explore. So it could be from books, it could be from our programs. It could be something from National Archives, which, by the way, is also under the National Library Board, and you can explore that. And just give you a little titbit, we're working on something that looks like a positive and it's a benign social feed. So the infinite feed will provide you things that will actually broaden your perspective and help you to explore so many more topics that you may not have imagined.

17:16 Host, Loh Chin Ee

Chapter Three: The future of libraries 

 As the world continues to evolve, libraries need to continually rethink their role in their communities, even as they stay true to their mission to bring reading and knowledge to their patrons. Brendan points to a key shift towards the library as a third space for community engagement.

17:38 Brendan Luyt

I think that the key factor in getting libraries to shift, of course, is the what I would call the onslaught of digital technologies, which makes physical reading more difficult to find public support for, because everybody thinks you can do everything online and through the internet, and it's all free and wonderful. So many libraries began to emphasise their role as what is in the scholarly term called ‘third space,’ a place basically for community engagement, places where people can meet, and, importantly, places where they don't have to buy anything. So much of our public space these days is basically taken up with places where you're not really accepted unless you're going to buy or you're going to pretend to buy, at least. But the libraries are one of the few places where you don't have to go and pretend to buy or actually buy. So that's an important shift. In terms of reading technologies, I think it's obvious a big part of public library function now is to facilitate access to electronic sources of information and digital reading options.

18:44 Host, Loh Chin Ee

Inclusive and democratic access to a wide range of materials, remains the goal of the library. The NLB champions an innovation mindset among its librarians to encourage experimentation with their services.

18:58 Gene Tan

We call it the skunkworks. So, we will take about 10 percent of the organisation, and they'll be working very hard on strategy objectives. In the current age of libraries, part of our LAB25, L A B 25, it is rapid prototyping, and the innovation happens in different pockets. So, we try to impart a sort of innovation method to everybody, and then all these small experiments would happen, and they are numerous. They may not all be centrally coordinated. And sometimes my boss, Cher Pong the CEO, will say, “you know, we might not really have a strategy. It's just do better things, don't just do things better. Just do better things. Yeah, just better it and find ways and partners want to do that with us.”

19:44 Host, Loh Chin Ee

One of the better things the NLB has done recently is experimenting with Generative AI to improve children's and adults' learning experiences in the physical space of the library.

19:58 Gene Tan

We wanted to figure out how to tell stories better, and then we went to how about helping people to tell their stories better? So we created something called StoryGen. It started as an idea like, you know, why don't we help people to do different versions of fairy tales, like twisted fairy tales? Because MOE has something called twisted fairy tales. And then we said, “Yeah, Gen AI help? Yes, and people are scared of Gen AI, so let's put the two together.” So we created a story generator. We use Gen AI to create almost like a five-panel comic strip, and then with the genre of writing and the look of the comic that you love. Then we said, “libraries are physical animals as well, physical and social. So why don't we create a place based social experience?” We put it in a space with an immersive screen, and then you could see your five-panel comic come to life, and then you take pictures of your parents, your friends, you know, jump in front of it. Download it, go home, and in the process, download the learning package about Generative AI. 

Something that we created recently called the ChatBook, which has also been a bit of a hit. So the ChatBook, we started as a phone-based service. It uses large language model to ingest the content of a very complicated book that may not be open for other large language models to ingest, but with permission of authors, we ingest it, and then we let people ask questions and talk to the book. We created that online first just to test run and then recently, we created something for S Rajaratnam, two volumes. So my dear friend Irene wrote two volumes, 1200 pages. She very kindly gave us the rights to use that. We ingested hours and hours of oral history from Rajaratnam, converted that into a physical, giant-sized book that you can talk to, and then around it you have books and books on Rajaratnam, and you have documents, like, for instance, the scribbling that he did. Did you know Rajaratnam actually wrote the first version of our pledge? So we had that on paper as well. So it became an experience of Rajaratnam not just asking ChatGPT when he was born. 

I need to share this story with you. It’s a fun story, a fun fact. So we did the ChatBook right, which is Rajaratnam, and then people were worried at first. So the writers were saying, “you know, doing all this Gen AI stuff on ChatBook and making the content available, wouldn't affect the sales of the writers?” You know what happened? The publisher told us that the books that were being sold, the Rajaratnam biographies, they sold out in Bras Basah. And they had phone calls from the bookstore owners saying that people were going there from National Library saying, “oh, we just saw this exhibition of the ChatBook. Could I have the book?” And it sold out, so it's got a positive spin on that.

22:44 Host, Loh Chin Ee

In today's world, we have quick access to information online, but the information is of differing quality and may be received differently. Social media algorithms can shape and narrow reading materials,. Misinformation, disinformation abound in this age, and the library is even more relevant as a space for quality information and the training of digital literacy.

23:08 Brendan Luyt

In a sane world, people really would recognize that a traditional good library is essential to what I would call civilised and humane society. Even if I've got loads of money, I can't buy all the books and information material that I may need or want, and most people don't have loads of money, so the library fills an important role there. I've already mentioned about our increasingly polarised world. That's a world that's filled with unreliable opinions masquerading as news, and on the other hand, news organisations that are increasingly beholden to governments and billionaires. So, when we're faced with these sort of developments then the old-style gate keeping function of librarians becomes vital. Now I'm not talking about librarians as sensors. But what I'm saying is that it's the function of the library to provide access to a wide range of quality sources from different perspectives. I mentioned this before, but I think it needs repeating; different perspectives, sometimes unpopular perspectives, but always quality in terms of the accuracy of the material and so on.

24:26 Host, Loh Chin Ee

Even as the world changes, libraries will have to keep pace with the quantity of information out there to ensure that we can have access to quality information, and our librarians will have to keep on innovating to make that happen. It's not an easy job, but I, for one, am, thankful for their work. If you'd like to hear more about the work that librarians do, tune in to a bonus episode where Gene Tan tells us more. Thank you for listening to the how we read podcast. This episode was written and hosted by me Loh Chin Ee. The podcast was produced by Kenn Delbridge of SPLiCE Studios. Administrative and research support was provided by Koh Yu Qun. The Singapore Book Council provided funding for series two of the How We Read podcast. Swipe on the cover art to see show notes with links and references. We're available on all major podcast apps. Please subscribe to be notified of new episodes and take a moment to give us a five-star review. For more information, please visit lohchinee.com.