Singapore's libraries: Between the covers

CHEN Onn Peng remembers what it was like to travel a whole hour just to get to a library. In the '60s, she and her twin sister would get on bus 107 from Johor Bahru and ride it all the way to a red brick building on Stamford Road. There, at what was Singapore's National Library building at the time, the teenaged sisters would encounter a universe larger than their own. "Whatever you wanted to know was all in there. The world was at our fingertips," the former media professional says as she recounts the time she spent poring over books at the library. As she read, she also made handwritten notes as there were no photocopying facilities then. In the 1960s, photocopying was in its infancy - Xerox had only introduced xerographic office photocopying in 1959.

Today, plenty has changed. Photocopy machines are considered legacy products. The red brick building no longer exists. And in Singapore, no one has to take an hour-long bus ride to go read some books.

Tracing the origins of the National Library takes a fair bit of time travel. Its history vends all the way back to 1837 when it began as a school library of the Singapore Free School, which was the precursor to today's Raffles Institution. The school was invited to move into a building on Bras Basah Road that had been meant for the Singapore Institution. Today, Raffles City Shopping Centre stands in its place.