The Lee Kong Chian Reference LibraryAfter serving the public for 45 years at the Stamford Road National Library building, the National Library of Singapore moved to its new premises and re-opened in July 2005. It is located at Victoria Street, the heart of Singapore's arts, culture, learning and entertainment hub. This building is about five times bigger than the old National Library building, with a gross floor area of 58,500 sq m. It is made up of two blocks, linked together by two skyways.
AAll rights reserved. National Library Board Singapore 2006 The new National Library building houses the Lee Kong Chian Reference Library, which was named in honour of the late Dr Lee Kong Chian, Founder of the Lee Foundation. The Foundation gave a S$60 million donation to the National Library. The Lee Kong Chian Reference Library takes up 7 floors out of the 16-storey building. It has a collection of more than half a million items, out of which up to 90% are available for library users to browse and use. There are also information counters on levels 7,8, 9 and 11. Library staff are rostered on counter duty during the opening hours of the library, which is 10am to 9pm daily, except for public holidays. Library users can also submit their enquiries through telephone, emails, fax, as well as by post. The blueprint for NLB's strategic direction for the next 5 years, Library 2010, sets out a target for the National Library to be a gateway for the world's knowledge on Asia. Hence, we have been focusing our efforts on building an Asian Centric collection with Singapore and Southeast Asian collections as the most important collections to develop further.Collections at the Lee Kong Chian Reference LibraryThe reference collections are divided broadly by subjects at the following floors:Level 13 -- Rare materials CollectionThe bulk of this collection is from the predecessor libraries -- Singapore Library (1844-1874) and Raffles Library and Museum (1874-1957). It includes publications from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Many of them were produced by Singapore's early printing presses. In reflection of Singapore's history and literary heritage, the collection has Jawi manuscripts, Malay and Southeast Asian language dictionaries, directories, almanacs, academic journals, casual and serious accounts of travels in the Malay Archipelago and Southeast Asia, as well as Chinese classics and romances translated into Baba Malay, and maps. Level 11 -- Singapore and Southeast Asian Collections
All rights reserved. National Library Board Singapore 2006 Level 10 -- Donors' Collections, Asian Children's CollectionThe Asian Children's Collection was started in the 1960s in an effort to raise the awareness and understanding of children literature from an Asian perspective. It covers materials on literary and research for children up to 13 years of age in the four official languages of Singapore. The collection focus includes the areas of literary writings, culture and folklores. This 20,000 items collection offers a rich resource for educators, illustrators and anyone who is interested to produce children's reading and writing materials. Private collections of individuals, organizations and societies offer valuable sources of information on Singapore's history, social and cultural heritage. Currently, there are 2 main donor collections being featured on this floor. The Ya Yin Kwan collection was donated to the library in 1964, the first donation made by an individual. The 10,000 volumes collection features a wide range of subject areas, with important titles on the overseas Chinese and history of Southeast Asia. Another personal donor, Tan Swie Hian, a local artist who enjoys multiple awards both locally and internationally, donated 6,500 items from his personal collection, including books and periodicals, as well as artifacts and paintings. Level 9 -- Chinese, Malay and Tamil CollectionsIn 1953, Dr Lee Kong Chian donated $375,000 for the building of the Stamford Road Library under the condition that publications on the vernacular languages be increased. In 1963, he donated a further $10,000 to purchase close to 4,000 books in Chinese, Malay and Tamil titles for the library collection. He was most concerned in having a library that serves the various races in Singapore in their mother tongues. Over the years, these three collections have amassed a comprehensive collection focusing on language and literature, history, business and arts, and the other social sciences subjects. Titles on Singapore and Southeast Asian countries are shelved at Level 11. Publications on China, Taiwan and Hong Kong are shelved at Level 9.
All rights reserved. National Library Board Singapore 2006 The Chinese Collection focuses on the arts, business, education, language and literature, history and geography. It takes up about 70% of the language collections. Special effort has been made to develop the following collections more intensively: China Resource Collection, Traditional Chinese Medicine Collection and Chinese Overseas Collection. In 1997, a Memorandum of Understanding with the National Library of China and Shanghai Library was signed. Through their expert advise, we are able to be kept informed on the latest publications on China related subjects. This helps facilitate our collection development efforts. The Malay Collection covers various aspects of community life in the Malay Archipelago, emphasizing on religion (inclusive of Islamic values, practice and way of life), socio-economy, politics, culture, language and literature. In particular, the Malay literature collection encompasses works on philosophy, poetry, drama, novels, essays and criticisms. This collection takes up about 20% of the language collection. The Tamil Collection focuses on the arts, religion, language and literature. The rich Tamil literature collection has literary works that cover the period from 500 BC to 21st century.
Level 8 -- Arts and Business CollectionsThe Arts Collection has over 30,000 items on the study and practice of the arts, ranging from art history to avant-garde contemporary art to creative industries. It is the National Library Board's largest collection of materials on the Visual Arts and complements the Performing Arts collection provided at the library@esplanade. While global in coverage, the focus is on the arts of Asia, specifically, China, India, Japan, Korea as well as Islamic arts. The collection is developed with an aim to contribute to Singapore¡¯s effort in building a cultural capital and developing a vibrant creative arts industry.The Business Collection has more than 35,000 volumes of materials on the latest business developments, benchmarking and best practices, selected market research, selected country and annual reports, business and trade directories.
Level 7 -- Social Science and Humanities; Science and Technology CollectionsThe social sciences and humanities collection is the second largest onsite collection with 93,000 volumes. It includes works on education, government, social policy, literature, library and information science, statistics and demographics, as well as world history. The science and technology collection features information on healthcare and medicine, natural and life sciences, engineering, chemical technologies, manufacturing, building construction and renovation, computer science and information technology. This collection has about 24,000 volumes. Programmes and ExhibitionsThe library regularly hosts a variety of programmes and performances to enrich the learning experience of library users. Permanent exhibition galleries like the history of National Library and Singapore Literary Pioneers aim to introduce library visitors to the library¡¯s services and collections. Library tours are also conducted to acquaint library visitors with the library architecture, collections and services.Online Library -- reaching out and staying relevantIn an effort to reach out to the increasing number of library users using the internet to seek information, the National Library Board's digital library (http://www.nlb.gov.sg) strives to increase its digital content with a greater selection of online databases, images, unpublished works of local authors, thematic articles on Singapore, digitized rare materials and digitized materials from partner libraries, like the British Library. Online databases complement the library's collection and they are made available at the libraries' multimedia stations at a nominal fee. The more popular databases among the 40 online databases that we subscribe to include: Factiva, Proquest, REALIS (URA Real Estate Information System), GMID (Global Market Information Database), Kompass, Bibliography of Asian Studies and Grove Art Online. Since 2003, rare materials have been made more accessible to the users through the digital medium. In addition, we have also tried to provide digital access to valuable collections on Singapore that exist in overseas institutions, like the British Library. To date, more than 13,000 digital images documenting Singapore's history and culture are available in Singapore Pages' Digitised Collection. These images are from early Singapore imprints and primary sources such as government records. Our Singapore and Southeast Asian librarians also contribute articles to The Singapore Story. They tell a story of Singapore's history with images taken from the digitized pages. This way, readers can have a different presentation of history and an opportunity to get to know the Singapore and Southeast Asia collections. NORA (NLB Online Repository of Artistic Works) was launched on 27 January 2005. It is a repository of drama, fiction, poetry and other writings by renowned and aspiring writers. It comprises mostly unpublished as well as out-of-print works, some of which belong to well established authors like Madeline Lee, Eleanor Wong, Alvin Pang, Edwin Thumboo, Ovidia Yu, Haresh Sharma, Goh Poh Seng and the late Kuo Pao Kun.Looking aheadWe are excited about future developments of the library. The levels and types of enquiries we received from local and overseas users have indicated an increasing interest in the library collection and a willingness of a larger segment of users to explore our collections and services. We look forward to working with other libraries and institutions to make information more accessible to our library users and to keep the functions of a national library alive and vibrant! Enquiries may be directed to our subject librarians in Singapore Heritage, Arts, or Business via our email enquiry service (ref@nlb.gov.sg). We accept enquiries in any of the four official languages (English, Malay, Chinese or Tamil).
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