Moving On: library@orchard in transit

Another day, another destiny…
- From One Day More, Le Miserable

So it’s not the eve of a revolution, but the eve of an ending and a new beginning (inspired by The Smashing Pumpkins!).

And in this musically-inclined post, I’m feeling like tomorrow is a sort of Bittersweet Symphony.

Tomorrow, we close, and it is indeed an ending of this journey of archiving and documenting the life of a library. But I think the new journey up ahead is starting, and if you’ve been reading this blog, please stay tuned as we move onto planning for our new spaces. We want your opinions!

On the topic of archival and documentation, I’ve really gotta highlight the efforts of our citizen bloggers once again! Check out Alice’s mega effort at 360 deg views of 21 (!!!) spots of the library. Gasp…

Ceneple and Max posted their thoughts about the library, and Charles, Regina and Priscilla have some cool photo sequences. Donna scared me with her promise of a post about 1 thing she hates about the library, but I’ll leave it to you to find out here, what it is that she hates! 

To all who are coming for our final swansong at library@orchard’s current venue (Ngee Ann City), I hope tomorrow will be a day you’ll remember Cos we’ll definitely remember the library as more than a workplace.

Ending off, here’s my song dedication to the library@orchard:

Speak to me, when all you got to keep is strong
Move along, move along like I know you do
And even when your hope is gone
Move along, move along just to make it through

-Move Along by the All American Rejects

- Posted by Jillian

Olivia’s one of our citizen bloggers but she doesn’t have a blog, so she’ll be guest blogging here!
Enough of boring ‘ol me, this is what Olivia sent us:

6 November 2007 Changes
 
I have been away from Singapore for three years. In that short span of time, I had returned to my home country on several occasions but each time only for a brief visit. On each visit, I noted changes in places that I went. But I didn’t pay much attention to them, until now.

The last few weeks had been overwhelming. I roamed ‘familiar’ shopping malls only to find that I needed to check a mall directory to find a shop, or worse, to ask someone where the toilet is (has moved to). I played tourist in a land that is my home. I braved outdoors each day to ‘familiar’ places, anxious that some might have disappeared into non-existence.

Perhaps one of the most visually shocking scene I saw was a tunnel of bright lights where the old National Library used to stand. The scene almost looked like that some aliens had landed their spaceship and had lifted the building up into their interiors. And then I heard the news that the library@orchard is moving.
 
As I stepped into the familiar library@orchard, I was reminded of my frequent visits there when I was younger. Back then, I liked it for its compactness. It wasn’t a maze of intimidating books. It held books that were of interest to me. The novels and travel books were very updated, and that meant I didn’t have to pay exorbitant bookstore prices for the latest reads. It was also the first time I felt relaxed at a library. Before library@orchard days, the library is a place where silence is golden and if you even squeak like a mouse, someone will ’shish’ at you.
 
Today, I returned to the same relaxed atmosphere at library@orchard. I was pleased to find that things are as they were. Well, almost. The sections are more or less as I had remembered them. But the titles are definitely updated. This is a positive change. I spied copies of cookbooks that I have been dying to own. I eagerly flipped through some titles and understood why floggers raved over some of them. I was able to relax in my own gastronomic world.

A couple of days ago, we received an email from Imran Ajmain, founder of the local hiphop collective: the Beats Society.

He had heard about our closure from Time Out magazine and was reflecting about his experiences doing gigs at the libraries… We’re really touched that he values the library@orchard (and all the other libraries that hosted the gigs) as “one of the dots” that “unknowingly connect themselves to create a pathway for people”. And we’re really sorry that Rauzan’s gig had those technical problems

Anyway, read his entire post here.

Youtube video of one of the gigs:

Btw I realised there’re quite a few videos of the library@orchard taken during various performances over the years… Check ‘em out with a keyword search “library orchard”

- Posted by Jillian

Check out the press release that was released on Nov 22, 2007.

5 more days!!! egads.

- Posted by Jillian

library@orchard is closing its doors on 30 Nov and there’s a whole lot of work to be done before then!

We’re looking for volunteers to help us with the packing of selected books from 27 Nov to 4 Dec.

You need to be able to commit a minimum of 5 hours throughout the day. You can choose to volunteer on only 1 day or on all 7 days! We’ll love to have you (really… we need you).

If you’re interested to volunteer, please email occl@nlb.gov.sg with your name, NRIC, contact details, and preferred date and time. We’ll get back to you!

*Update: For those library-friendly people who are already existing Friends of the Library, you can also sign up to help library@orchard through the FOL website. (Thanks Valerie for the reminder!)

- Posted by Lynn with thanks in advance 

I’ve been thinking. (thinking leads to spewing. spewing leads to long posts… have patience ok, dear reader)

If you read this blog, you’ll probably know that this is the library@orchard’s blog, we are closing on Nov 30 2007, and the library@orchard is a public library located in Ngee Ann City, Singapore.

If you read more of this blog, you’ll know that we’re unique in that we’re trying to capture an age group, which according to a survey done years ago, did not really use the public libraries. And that group is: people aged btw 18-35.

According to said survey, this group of people “drop out” of the libraries after they leave school and they don’t come back until they have kids (it seems it’s more impt for kids to have good reading habits but it’s less impt for adults?).

To sidetrack abit, according to Jillian’s totally non-scientific observations, we can also add ”increasing decrease in the time available for reading” and “increasing disposable income to buy reading material” as some reasons for non-usage.

Anyway, I was actually gonna post about youths and the library!

Why?
(more…)

We’ve updated our Happenings page!

Amongst all of the updates is a film screening this Wednesday night (14 Nov, 7-9pm) on two independent film projects by local journalists - I Love Malaya and The Mitre Spell. You’ll also get a chance to hear how these busy journalists go beyond their regular work and produce independent films in a panel discussion.

I Love Malaya is a short film about the exiled former members of the Malayan Communists Party who want to return home, but can’t. In having to write a post on it, I did a search for the film on youtube (in between searching for Jolin Tsai videos) and watched a newsreel version clip of it. 

Reading the film sypnosis, I thought it would be a film about guerilla soldiers hiding out in the forests waging war over a political idealogy. You know, boring political debates and military figures walking around. Instead, the exiles are all in their 70s and 80s and are definitely not wearing uniforms. Although we grow up in a country where communism is a dirty word, I found myself starting to feel sorry for these elderly people who left their family, home, and loved ones 50 years ago, and have never been able to return.  

In the film, you hear and see many Malaysians who feel that this is just punishment for communists  The magic of the film is that it manages to humanize these ”communists”. It doesn’t touch on whether communism is right or wrong but shows you and makes you feel the plight of exile.

Watch it on youtube first if you want, but there will be a panel discussion with the filmmakers on Wednesday and I’ll love to hear what they have to say about their works. How many of us (ok, me) would love to be able to capture and evoke such emotion, but just don’t have the bloody talent?

Oh hey, found the trailer for The Mitre Spell:

Anyway, the countdown has started (17 more days!) to our last day at Ngee Ann City. We can’t bear to go out without a blast and have been working day, night, and early mornings to offer as many programmes and events as we can in our last 17 days here.

library@orchard is 8 years old, but if you’ve only found out in the last few months that we exist - it’s not too late! I repeat, it’s not too late!

(more…)

Yup, it’s finally here, the end of November looms ahead. The winds of change are in the air and before I start spouting yet more tacky lines about time and tide waiting for no man and the inevitability of mortal existence….. Let’s get straight to the point.

WE ARE CLOSING ON NOVEMBER THE 30TH and WE ARE HAVING A PARTY!
and you’re invited.

Please RSVP (asap!) if you are coming. Drop us an email at occl@nlb.gov.sg and don’t forget to let us know the number of peeps you’re coming with!

- Posted by Jillian

So what have our citizen reporters been up to for the past week? 

Donna and Christine visited us again (I know cos I saw their passes in our pass drawer! ;)), not sure what’s gonna be up but Donna posted a detailed write-up of our briefing here. And I realised from reading her blog, that Jean has actually met her online before! So fortituous! (go on, ask me what tt means ;p) Hehehe.

Jean and Alice also came down last weekend to conduct interviews with some of our users and posted this. Makes me wonder, how many people who come to the library regularly are still unaware that we’re closing? Maybe it’s bcos students often use the library as a study lounge rather than for our materials or programmes etc, so to them it’s just another place and they don’t really bother to read the posters or find out what’s happening? Students out there, please feel free to disagree! ;p

In my next post, I’ll take a look at the really cool posts by Joel and Kenneth. They’ve got loads of stuff!

By the way, we’ve got a listing of events at the library on our right hand links, check out November for upcoming happenings. There’ll be a talk on the emotions and intelligence of animals this Sunday (11th Nov). 

To finish off, we’ve got a few new recruits on our blogroll and they are…. Ceneple, Ian and Priscilla! Ceneple (who my boss referred to as “see-ni-pple” *smirk* but is actually pronounced as “scene-ple”) is planning to jot down some of her personal memories of the library as part of the project.

Also, there may be more cos people are still leaving comments about joining this movement. The answer is YES U CAN! Just email Jillian at occl@nlb.gov.sg

-Posted by Jillian

Just this Tues, we held our ‘brief’ briefing for folks who were interested in helping to blog about the closing of library@orchard. Honestly, we (the Rambling Librarian and I) were a little afraid that no one would turn up and we would have to eat all the cakes ourselves end up consoling ourselves ;p

After promoting the idea on various sites (Tomorrow.sg, theory.isthereason, The Ridge etc. etc.), we’d hoped that people would rise to our call…

And they did!

Well, 8 people did

They were a fun group who were passionate about the library (it’s nice to feel loved) as well as blogging. Ivan completed his official powerpoint presentation in about 6 mins and the rest of the time was spent on QnA, bouncing off ideas and random chitchat. Oh yah, and eating cakes! For more pics, go forth to Ivan’s Flickr.

In fact, they’re so speedy that they’ve already blogged about the briefing. Wah! Am truly touched.

• Simply Jean: Remininsces of the library@orchard
• Alice in Wonderland: Memories of library@orchard
• Christine Tjia: Citizen Reporters
• D.D. The Citizen Reporter?????
• *Green and Bear It: library@orchard in transit
• music.city.soul: Dream Catch Me

To our valiant citizen reporters: Thank You!

We hope you had fun and will continue enjoying yourselves blogging about the library. I’ve added your sites to our blog roll and we’ll be featuring your posts regularly. And thanks also for mentioning that we librarians are somewhat-not-boring! heehee.

If there’s anyone who’s still interested in being a part of this, do check out the “official powerpoint” at this link.

Next, drop us an email (occl@nlb.gov.sg) with your full name, NRIC No. and blog/website and also any queries you may have. We’ll get back to you with a confirmation email.

- Posted by Jillian