Singapore Government Press Release

Media Division, Ministry of Information and The Arts

36th Storey, PSA Building, 460 Alexandra Road, Singapore 119963.

Tel: 3757794/5

___________________________________________________

Dr Brian Howard, President of the LaSalle-SIA College of the Arts

Mr Shaw Vee Meng, Chairman of the Shaw Foundation,

Ladies & Gentlemen

I am pleased to be present this afternoon on the occasion of the naming of your College Library.

The LaSalle-SIA College is at an exciting phase of development as arts education in Singapore will be receiving a boost with a number of proposals in the pipeline. Education is of high priority in Singapore. Libraries and information resource centres are central to any educational venture. To prepare for the knowledge economy of the 21^st century, the government undertook a study of the future role of libraries. This led to the publication of the report on Library 2000. It stated that the library of the future would continuously expand the nation’s capacity to learn through a national network of libraries and information resource centres providing services and learning opportunities to support the advancement of Singapore". The vision of Library 2000 sees libraries as being ‘positioned as an integral part of the national system, actively supporting Singapore as a learning nation’.

Library 2000 will see technology increasingly used to provide ready access to information from both local and international libraries and databases. Our libraries will soon focus more on the greater coverage of information that they can access world-wide, and less on the size of their own physical collection. They will also constantly find new ways of providing a wider range of value-added services to meet the needs of their users.

Indeed, with modern technology, the paradigm has shifted for library services. Libraries have moved from being one-medium to multiple-media, from local reach to global reach, from the physically bounded to the borderless. Similarly, the traditional users’ idea of "going to the library" has evolved into the idea that "the library comes to us".

And so we speak of an adaptive public library system. Apart from the above features, it can form different configurations, depending on the branch of knowledge to be specialised in. Thus, arts education is one such configuration envisaged in the Library 2000 Report. There will be a central Arts Library which specialises in Singapore and regional arts. All existing arts libraries, such as yours, will have an important place in this configuration.

I therefore congratulate you on your timely coming on stage at this significant juncture of the development of arts education in Singapore. There is a very important role for you to play in promoting a deeper understanding of the history and cultures of this region.

Your vision for the LaSalle-SIA Arts Library is to support a centre of excellence in education, training and research in the creative arts, and to be one of the leading libraries of the visual and performing arts in Singapore and the region. I am told yours is already one of the better art libraries in the region with a comprehensive collection of over 18,000 holdings.

I warmly encourage you to fulfil your mission, firstly to develop the College into a centre of creative arts research with strong and active links to the creative arts industry. Secondly, to develop into a cross-cultural research centre on the arts in Southeast Asia. And, thirdly, to promote a wider appreciation of the arts among the local public by offering a diverse range of arts enrichment programmes.

I am pleased to note that there are future plans to have the library housed in a new building on the College grounds with a larger floor space. As expansion takes place, links with other libraries within the region and beyond will be established. I wish you every success in attaining your goals and aspirations.

The LaSalle-SIA College of the Arts has come a long way since its beginning. This is due in no small measure to the substantial support given by the community. Credit must go to these caring men and women of talent, industry and business, without whose support the Arts Library could not have flourished the way it did.

In October 1990, the Arts Library started out as The Shaw Library at Telok Kurau and the Music Library at St Patrick’s School. It was financed by the Shaw Foundation. Brother Joseph McNally, the founder of the College, had donated a fair amount of his collection of books to the library. Other donors, including various embassies, contributed generously in cash or in kind. Their kind support and patronage of the arts in Singapore is very much appreciated.

Today, we are here to specially thank the Shaw Foundation for its unflinching support of the College. Once again, I am delighted to witness the naming of the College Library as the Shaw Foundation Library.

***********