Opening Remarks by Minister Josephine Teo at NLB's Donors' Appreciation Night 2024

OPENING REMARKS BY MINISTER JOSEPHINE TEO AT NLB’S DONORS’ APPRECIATION NIGHT 2024 (26 SEP 2024)

NLB’s Esteemed Donors

Mr Lee Seow Hiang, Chairman, NLB

Mr Ng Cher Pong, Chief Executive Officer, NLB

Distinguished Guests

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Introduction

1. Good evening, and thank you all for being here.

2. I am delighted to join you at Donors’ Appreciation Night. This is the third year in a row that I’m attending, and will no doubt again learn something about Singapore I didn’t know before.

3. I especially look forward to speaking with our donors, who are at the very heart of NLB’s efforts to document our shared history and heritage. Your contributions help us show the many facets of our Singapore Story. And I would like to, on behalf of NLB, as well as all Singaporeans, thank you, for the generous donations of the artefacts that you have had, as part of your own life, and are now sharing with us. Thank you so much for your generosity.

4. Tonight, I want to share a story from one of our longstanding donors, Mr Koh Seow Chuan. Mr Koh is the founder of established local architecture firm DP Architects, and has been donating artefacts such as artworks and documents since 2005.

5. Regrettably, Mr Koh is not able to join us in person, but let’s hear what he has to say by video.

6. It is NLB’s goal to honour the dreams of donors like Mr Koh. We are committed to preserving the thought and care that went into their collections, and sharing these ideas with others, to ensure their glimpses of history secure a place in our shared Singapore Story.

Key Message 1: NLB and NAS will work with donors and stakeholders to grow NLB’s collections to inspire Singapore Storytellers.

7. The National Library, together with the National Archives of Singapore, are our key memory institutions, custodians of our collective past and common heritage. This would not have been possible without donors like you.

8. This past year alone, 84 donors have added over 4,000 new gems to our collection, several of which are on display tonight.

a. Among the donations are over 50 video recordings of productions by Teater Kami Limited. These were donated by Teater Kami’s founder, Cultural Medallion recipient Puan Atin Amat¹, a pivotal force in Singapore’s Malay theatre scene.

b. The National Library is also working to digitise Teater Kami’s other materials, like production notes and photographs, and make them accessible to those wanting to understand the evolution of the arts in Singapore.

c. Another generous donation comprises photographs of different buses belonging to Tay Koh Yat Bus Company², which provide a nostalgic snapshot of early Singapore. They were gifted by Ms Tay Beng Keong, granddaughter of the company’s eponymous founder. I hope you will join me later to view these photographs.

Key Message 2: NLB and NAS are innovating and experimenting to reimagine our libraries and archives, looking at new ways to tell our Singapore Story.

9. Beyond sharing our past, the National Library Board and National Archives of Singapore have also been looking to the future and imagining new ways to tell our Singapore Story. Catalysed by the “Libraries and Archives Blueprint 2025”, NLB has come up with innovative experiments, using technology to display archived and donated materials in new formats.

10. At the National Library Building, there are currently two showcases that best illustrate this: Book Havens of Bras Basah: Curiocity³, and the ChatBook featuring S. Rajaratnam⁴. I would not be able to do justice to these showcases by verbally describing them, so I strongly recommend that you visit them yourselves. You will then understand how they exemplify NLB’s commitment to innovate and use technology to present donated materials in creative and engaging ways.

11. I can share with you that I have tried the Chatbook featuring S. Rajaratnam. May I also add that besides myself and Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, when he came to launch Irene Ng’s book, SM Lee Hsien Loong was also a key user of this service. Because he knows a lot about Mr S. Rajaratnam, he was able to put this Chatbook to test. NLB shared with me that he issued 23 “exam questions” to the Chatbook, and I’m told that fortunately, for the Chatbook, it passed with flying colors.

12. NLB’s work does not stop there. I am happy to announce an upcoming immersive exhibition featuring materials from the family of pioneer artist Liu Kang. The exhibition will open in January 2025, and present never-before-seen records of a formative experience that impacted Liu Kang’s work and Singapore’s art scene.

a. This exhibition will use audiovisual materials, oral histories and personal documents to create a multi-sensorial, “phygital” experience –through both physical artefact displays and digital storytelling techniques.

b. Do keep a lookout for this milestone showcase.

Key Message 3: All Singaporeans are co-authors of our Singapore Story, and NLB’s work enables more citizens to become Singapore Storytellers.

13. Returning to Mr Koh Seow Chuan’s hope that his collections will inspire generations after him to fashion even more compelling Singapore Stories, I think we are, in fact, already seeing this hope come to life.

a. For instance, Singapore writer Rachel Heng’s novel, The Great Reclamation, is based on extensive research of Singapore’s past. One of the first things she read was an NLB BiblioAsia article on land reclamation.

b. She also read the transcripts of oral history interviews and pored through NewspaperSG, our archive of old newspapers, to unearth long-forgotten details like the conveyor belt that moved earth from hills in Bedok to fill up the coastline.

c. Another example is artist Yip Yew Chong’s impressive 60m long painting, which captures a slice of life in Singapore in the 1970s and 1980s. Yew Chong relied heavily on NLB’s collection of old photographs to ensure historical accuracy in his painting.

14. Seeing fellow Singaporeans use our archive materials to tell stories about Singapore, spurs us to make our collections more accessible through various means, including by digitisation.

15. Of course, none of this would be possible without the contributions of our partners and donors, which add depth, colour and meaning to nation building.

16. Once again, to all donors past and present, thank you.

17. Let’s continue to work together to remember the stories of our past, and write the next chapters of our Singapore Story.

18. I wish you all a wonderful evening!

¹Puan Atin was awarded the Cultural Medallion in 2011.

²Tay Koh Yat Bus Company was Singapore’s largest Chinese bus company in 1949.

³The Book Havens of Bras Basah showcase features an immersive 3D projection of iconic buildings and animated lifestyles from three different eras, and includes eight Augmented Reality points showing the history of Bras Basah. It makes use of materials from the generous donated collections of Lee Kip Lin, Lim Shao Bin, the Shanghai Book Company, and the Singapore Federation of Chinese Clan Associations, among others.

⁴The ChatBook featuring S. Rajaratnam allows visitors to talk to it through a microphone. It will then reply, drawing on information from NAS’s collections, including oral history interviews, speeches and photographs of Mr Rajaratnam. This is the first publicly-available ChatBook, and has been enhanced based on feedback from an earlier prototype that was tested with academics, members of the public, and international library partners.