Do you remember the time?
Saturday, March 22nd, 2008NLB hit the headlines recently for a rather curious incident (nope, not of the dog in the night time!). Heh, this isn’t a “to-park-or-not-to-park” post, but something that caught my attention in the follow-up article run by the same publication.
Yes, there was a reference to a series of concerts held at library@orchard way back when in 2006. [Minor digression: Rock never dies and apparently, neither do bad memories. Did you know the brain remembers the bad experiences better than good ones? Here’s a quick link to a short article. I think I’ve also read it in Mind Wide Open… ]
Back to my actual point, the concerts.
Co-organised by Stomp, they happened to be a series of rock concerts by local bands. Some nights, you’d probably think another earthquake’s hit Sumatra…
Amazingly, some videos are still archived on the Stomp website, a round-up of different views can be found here. All the videos can be found at this other link, but much scrolling is involved (try somewhere around Oct/Sep 2006).
Anyway, we’re gonna be coming up with 2 libraries at Orchard Road, so one of the things we are busy with now is thinking up what these 2 spaces are gonna be like.
I’m thinking, hard rock concerts may not be the best thing to do, but those libraries shouldn’t feel as if you’ve just stepped into an examination hall, all you can hear is frantic scribbling and the flipping of paper.
Thinking “aloud”:
Is the public library only for solitary reading and studying?
What about creative expressions and social learning?
What should a library in Orchard Road be like? Should it be exactly the same as all the other branches?
How would you, gentle reader, attract teens to use the library?
Or, how would you convert those (young and old) who think reading is a waste of time? Obviously, running around with a slightly crazed look in one’s eyes, screaming “read dammit!” doesn’t really work…
We did a poll amongst youths, and they were keen on both “a quiet environment” and “a lively, vibrant environment”, proving that at the end of the day, that’s the way the kueh-kueh crumbles: what people want is to have their cake and eat it.
- Posted by Jillian, now hungry and looking for kueh-kuehs…
