Old National Library Building
The Old National Library Building was a library building at Stamford Road, located in the Museum Planning Area of Singapore, which housed the National Library. The library building was first suggested by Chinese philanthropist Lee Kong Chian in 1953, who wanted to establish a free multilingual public library; before this, most libraries were private. His suggestion was supported by the British government, and construction began the following year. The building was completed and officially opened in 1960 as the Raffles National Library, taking its name from the Raffles Library which it succeeded, and became a national icon for many Singaporeans.
Known for its red-brick exterior, the library would operate for over four decades, during which many advancements were made to improve its services such as creating mobile and branch libraries. The building additionally housed a reference library, a microfilm reading room, a lecture hall, and stacks for storage purposes. The library's first Singaporean director, Hedwig Anuar, helped with popularising the library among the youth and managing it from 1960 to 1988. Near its final years in 2001, the library's collection would peak at 6,861,100 books.
In the late 1980s, plans were announced in Parliament of the construction of a new National Library at Victoria Street. Despite a huge groundswell of public dissent, the library was closed on 31 March 2004 and was demolished later that year to make way for the construction of the Fort Canning Tunnel to ease road traffic to the city. The controversy surrounding the building's demise has been credited with sparking greater awareness of local cultural roots and an unprecedented wave in favour of heritage conservation among Singaporeans.
Description
Site
The library was located at 91 Stamford Road, near Fort Canning Hill in Singapore's Museum Planning Area. It was formerly occupied by the St John Ambulance Headquarters and British Council Hall, which were demolished to make way for the library. The total floor area of the library was about. It was initially managed by the Ministry of Education from 1955 to 1959, the Ministry of Culture from 1959 to 1985, the Ministry of Community Development from 1985 to 1995, and finally by the National Library Board from 1995 onwards. It was accessible via City Hall or Dhoby Ghaut MRT station.Architecture
The library was designed by architects from the Public Works Department, with consultation from L. M. Harrod. It was made out of reinforced concrete and brick, with the exterior painted red and select bricks decorated by cement pointings. Its red-brick exterior was supposed to be reminiscent of British architecture in the early 1950s. Upon its opening, the building received criticism for its appearance, with architect William Lim Siew Wai stating that the building should appear as a monument of Singapore. Another architect, Ong Eng Han, said that it was "a jumble of architectural sections which been lumped together to form a haphazard whole."The building was two storeys tall, excluding the basement, and took a T-shaped form. The basement was used as a storage room, a workshop to repair mobile libraries, an area to catalogue and process books, and held the air-conditioning plant, which served the offices, lecture hall, mezzanine, and the library's stack building. The first floor had the exhibition hall, libraries for adults and children, a Braille library for the blind, an activities room for children which held puppet shows, a lecture hall, and work departments. The lecture hall had space for around 200 people and could be hired out for lectures, films, or other meeting purposes. It consisted of a stage and projector with its own entrance separate to the building so that it could be accessed even when the library was closed. The mezzanine had offices and training rooms for library staff.
The second floor had a reference library, study area, microfilm reading room, conference room, and reading room, the latter of which was typically used by secondary school students for studying. The conference room could seat about 50 people and, much like the lecture hall, was hired out for local use. Furthermore, a five-storey building was erected nearby to help store books and archive government documents, serving as the library's stack. It was designed in such a way that it could be expanded exponentially to help store future items. Although the stacks were not directly accessible to the public, a book lift was incorporated for readers. The five-storey stack building also received air-conditioning.
In the centre, there was a small open air courtyard which was occupied by a fountain and cafe, known as the Coffee Club Xpress cafe. The courtyard was mainly used as a recreational area, holding multiple weekly events. These weekly programmes, which were launched in June 1998, were hosted to both bring non-readers to the library and serve as an area for people to express themselves. Known as Xpressions @ the Courtyard, it featured presentations on feng shui, business, Cantonese opera, Indian dance, music, film-making, and poetry, which typically brought around 115 people per session.
Facilities
Two years after its opening in 1960, the library was estimated to be able to hold around 250,000 books, with space for further expansion. By 1995, its collection grew to 407,794 books – 74% were in English, 15% in Chinese, 8% in Malay, and 3% in Tamil. It would gain access to a further 21 million books in Chinese in 1997 following an agreement between the National Library Board and the National Library of China. Additionally, the library had 4,000 volumes of music, 200 books in Braille, and 1,000 microfilms. The library also maintained subscriptions with around 400 periodicals and 500 annuals. By 2001, the library had accumulated a collection of 6,861,100 books. It also served as the headquarters for Singapore's public library services, along with holding documents from the State Archives and local publications under the Printers' and Publishers' Ordinance.The library could seat different amounts of people per area, with space for 100 in the adult library, 100 in the children's library, and 200 in the reference library. However, the library would receive frequent complaints on the lack of accommodation, particularly during peak hours or examination periods, with students taking up most of the seats during the latter. The library's book shelves were made with balau timber that were further graded and painted using insecticide solution to help maintain the books. Dark red meranti timber was used in making the furniture, which itself was made by the Singapore Prisons Department. The stacks were made with steel. In 1964, the library was expanded with a Southeast Asia Room, which included archives, journals, newspapers, and photographs relating to the region. This collection, known as the Ya Yin Kwan collection, comprised around 10,000 items that were donated to the library by Malaysian businessman Tan Yeok Seng and was officially opened by culture minister S. Rajaratnam.
In 1979, the National Library spent buying its first computers, which were taken from the Ministry of Finance's Computer Services Department. This was part of an effort to computerise the library and its branches in three stages. In 1983, audio-visual equipment was purchased to allow audio-visual materials such as filmstrips, videotapes, slides, and cassettes to be viewed or listened to. The rooms containing the equipment could seat around 12 people. Moreover, the library launched a borrowing service for audio-visual materials. In 1988, the library temporarily stopped readers from borrowing books for the purpose of cataloguing its entire collection into a computer database, which subsequently allowed readers to identify the book they were looking for via computer terminals in the library. In 1995, National Library, alongside other libraries in Singapore, added terminals for reader's use which allowed free access to the internet at those locations. The National Library had three – two in the reference library and one in the loan section. They could be used to renew books, search through the library's catalogue, and ask questions.
After the library's renovation in 1998, more services and rooms were added such as a student resource room, heritage room, current affairs room, Singapore-related resources room, and computer room. The floor was carpeted and the office area was converted into a larger, public space. This was to add more open spaces in the building, which was further increased by the creation of a lobby and courtyard, which totalled to an additional being added. The library also began adapting to the IT age, as seen with its addition of a computer room that had 38 computers that could search on over 200 databases. Older books that were worn out were also removed and replaced with 60,000 newer books. This renovation saw the library's visitorship increase from 30,000 to 187,000 monthly.
History
Background
One of the earliest libraries in Singapore was established at the Singapore Free School in 1837. The school's library was small, being expanded in 1844 by residents into the Singapore Library. The Singapore Library used subscriptions as its main source of income, inevitably facing frequent financial difficulties. In 1874, the Singapore Library would merge to form the Raffles Library, in return that the government would take over their debt and that the founders be given lifetime access to the new library.Despite being called a public library, the Raffles Library was subscription-based and only had 349 members in 1899. In addition, its users were mainly Europeans and was stated to have been "generally less than welcoming" towards non-Europeans. Although there was a free reading room where non-members could request books, it was also used sparingly, only receiving 4,000 visitors in 1878 or about 1.7% of Singapore's population at the time. The library also contained mostly English-language books, a language which only a minority of the Singaporean population could read.
The earliest suggestion of a change to the Raffles Library's policies was in 1940, when library director Frederick Chasen wrote a letter to the library's committee suggesting that they "do something for the mass of Singapore's people". However, Chasen did acknowledge that the "poorer class be practically dead weight financially" and would "swamp the more fastidious element among the subscribers." Following World War II, the library would be left unaffected, but anti-colonial and pro-independence sentiments grew amongst Singaporeans. This led to Singapore being granted slight internal governance in the 1950s.