Author Archives: Editor

DCMI Workshop 2013

Organised by the DCMI AsiaPAc and held in conjunction with IFLA WLIC 2013, the DCMI Workshop aims to raise awareness among librarians in the Asian region on the implementation of RDA and how library metadata (specifically Dublin Core) can be exposed as linked data to improve visibility & enhance collection usage. Our objective is to build confidence among Asian librarians to work well in the digital arena and be comfortable enough to adopt new technologies that will help improve their libraries’ services. A secondary objective is to build a community for the DCMI Asia Task Group where regular discussion on metadata matters can be established.

The theme for the workshop will be “Resource, Description and Access, Dublin Core and Linked Open Data” and it will be made up of 2 half-day seminars. The morning seminar will focus on Introductory concepts which is very important for our region where most librarians are still working with MARC and are not exposed to linked data or semantic web technologies. The afternoon seminar will focus on Implementation, what and how librarians can expose both their MARC and DC metadata as linked data.

Held on 15 August 2013 in Singapore, the seminar is free of charge and limited to 150 participants. Kindly register online at: http://ifla2013satellite.nlb.sg/dcmi-workshop/main/registration/

More information can be found at: http://ifla2013satellite.nlb.sg/dcmi-workshop/

Information provided by Ms Tang Puay Eng.

May 2013 – AGM quick updates

Hi all,

Just a quick update that your new LAS Council for the year 2013 to 2015 has been elected. The following are members and their positions in the Council. The election went smoothly without any incidents or objections to the proceedings. It was one of the quickest AGM, I have had the opportunity to attend! We also had an enjoyable time at a new venue – the Orchard Hotel.

The new LAS Council for 2013 – 2015

President: Lee Cheng Ean
Immediate Past President: Gene Tan
Vice-President: Judy Ng
Treasurer: Joseph Kennedy
Hon. Secretary: Stephanie Ng
Asst. Hon. Secretary (Membership Chair): Patrick Pu
Council Member (Training & Development Chair): Flora Bay
Council Member (Sociel & Programme Chair): Fang Sin Guek
Council Member (Business Development Chair): Caroline Ho
Council Member (IT & Web Chair): Kannadasan Venkatachalam
Council Member (Publications Chair): Yit Chin Chuan
Council Member (Special Libraries Section Chair): Carol Sim

Congratulations to all the elected members.

Gene (Immediate Past President) announced that although the early bird registration has lapsed for the WLIC2013 event, those of you facing difficulty registering yourselves with IFLA earlier on may approach him for an appeal for consideration for early-bird qualifications.

Cheers!
Yit

May 2013 Editorial

Hi all,

Apologies for missing 1st May 2013 timeline (but hey, it’s Labor day – where all work stops, right?!) – okay the month of May promises to be exciting for LAS since it’s time for our Annual General Meeting (on 18 May 2013).  Please remember to register your attendance here:

http://www.las.org.sg/eforms/view.php?id=28

It is also Elections for our next LAS Council - so for those of you whom believe you are able to contribute or you know of somebody whom would be able to help LAS grow – please nominate yourselves or your friends into the Council.

This event will be held at Orchard Hotel 9.30am to 2pm (lunch included).  Hope to see as many of you as possible!

Yit

April 2013 Editorial

Hi all,

Hopefully April 1st went by without major incidences and a few good laughs.  Yeah, yeah, how many of you had hoped that Google did come up with the smells thingie….. but I am watching out for Google Glass though  – that’s pretty cool!

April for our polytechnic libraries would also mean a busy period for the coming start of the new term – and new students to train on how to use library.  For a lot of institutions it would also mean new plans and things to do for the next Financial Year.

LAS members will also need to look out for next month’s AGM.  Yes, it’s election year again and the call will be going out for those of you interested, willing and able to help play a role in our LAS Council.  Please participate actively, as our association can only grow stronger with the combined contributions and effort of all our members!

Thanks to our IT chair, Hazman, LAS journal SJLIM is now registered with the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) – for those of you interested (yes free-access journals), please check out:

http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=subject&cpId=129

We have just listed ourselves there and put a link back to our site for content access - we will be considering whether we should put our contents there.

A reminder also about the coming IFLA WLIC2013 in August – I know some of you have been actively involved in this.  The publication team would like to thank all the librarians and libraries whom have contributed to the publication project.  We are also thankful of some of the sponsors whom have stepped in to support us as well.  I am also most grateful to the volunteers and representatives from the various libraries whom have helped to collect and collate entries from their colleagues.  We are busy preparing for the physical publications and would also need help for more contents for the planned website covering Libraries and Librarians in Singapore (yes contents are always welcomed, the only limit we have is space within the physical publication but for the website we are at the moment not setting any cap.

Yit

LAS New Year Party 2013

Food, Fun & Friends at the LAS New Year Party 2013

The very first LAS event for 2013 was held on 25 January 2013 at The Salon, National Museum of Singapore. About 60-odd members spent a relaxing Friday evening in this cosy atmosphere. We enjoyed a festive buffet spread, let our hair down, played games, caught up with old friends and made new ones! It was also an extremely colourful event as the dress code was no black or white.

Check out the fun and action in these photos and videos!!

Practising for the “Speed Stacker” game…

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Speed Stacking in progress…

LAS New Year Party 2013 – Speed Stacker from LAS WebMaster on Vimeo.

Speed Stacker champions! 

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Group shots of the other groups…

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Gift Exchange time!

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Video of the Gift Exchange in progress

LAS New Year Party 2013 – Gift Exchange from LAS WebMaster on Vimeo.

LAS Council Trio – Gene, Ean & Susan 

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Party organizing committee – Ai Ling, Joan, Phoebe, Steven and Beng Hwee (not present in photo)

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Happy Snake Year!

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Reported  by Khoo Ai Ling.

March 2013 Editorial

How time flies! It’s already March and yes most organizations with their financial year closing would be in a mad rush to ensure fund expenditure and purchases are all tied up neatly before they have to start the new FY. Best wishes to all!

For LAS, we breathe a sigh of relief each time we have to give birth to our SJLIM, but I am happy to announce that the 2012 version of SJLIM (Volume 41) is finally ready and is accessible directly from our LAS pages. Please click on this link to get there.

The other significant happening was that Singapore’s very first volunteer-run library, library@Chinatown was officially launched at the end of January 2013. If you haven’t visited it yet, I have heard that our programming team is looking into organizing a tour so do keep a look out when the call for those interested to register is made! For those interested in more details you may check out this page put up by Straits Times for some pictures. NLB’s press release about this library can be found here.

February 2013 Editorial

Hi all,

I hope the first month of the new year finds you well and you probably have started some new initiatives or are planning for some since budget planning should be turning up soon for some of you.

Just a quick catch up – ISEAS library had appointed Mr. Pitt Kuan Wah to be its Head of Library with effect from 1st Jan 2013. He replaced Ms. Zaleha Tamby who was the previous Head of Library. Congratulations and best wishes to Mr. Pitt for his new posting!

Also close to the end of January, LAS held its new year bash and around 60-odd LAS members turned up at the National Museum of Singapore’s Salon Room for the gathering. We had a wonderful time – I will try and bug our programming team for a report and some pictures soon – please watch out for that.

Of course the month of February 2013 is likely to be a busy period for our Chinese members whom are likely pre-occupied with the Chinese New Year festivities. A very happy new Chinese New Year to all whom will be celebrating this occassion! May the Golden Snake brings abundant opportunities to grow and prosper for one and all!

For those of you watching out for the SJLIM issue of 2012 – please be assured we are trying our best to get it ready (we hope to publish before the month is out) – please take note we are no longer printing physical copies of the SJLIM – I will announce it once its ready and put up on our LAS website/pages!

In the meantime….. Shhhhh!!!!! (yeah, a poor rendition of the snake I know, but it does remind us of our past practice of requesting for silence in our reading spaces ;-) )

Yit

January 2013 Editorial

A very happy new year to one and all!

2013 promises to be a fruitful and busy year for all of us at LAS – so be sure to stay tune and participate in the up-coming activities.   This is of course the year we bring IFLA WLIC to Singapore – that will be coming up in August but we know a lot of you have volunteered to help out in the various projects that would enable us to make the event successful and memorable for everyone.  Thanks!

In January itself, you can look forward to the call by our Program committee for the annual gathering of LAS members – we heard that it would be a very different venue from our regular sessions.  So please keep a watch out for the announcement for registration!

Also LAS will have its election year for the next LAS Council – that would be coming up at our AGM happening around May 2013 this year – that is also something for us to look forward to.

Please keep your 100-word stories coming in to the Publications Committee – yes, we plan to present a slice of the lives of our librarians to our friends whom would be visiting us for the WLIC2013 – to all those who have contributed a big THANK YOU for your support, for those who are still deliberating over this – please send in your drafts!  Our team can quickly turn-it-around and help you complete your stories very efficiently  (our average record stands at around 2 emails or so to settle your stories).

To round off – here’s an economical idea for your library material presentation:

The material is actually a Napkin Dispenser – but one library had made use of it for its book display – the cost of the plastic unit?  Around $2.90 – compared to other plastic display holders this price might be worth considering for your library.

Yit

Let’s go Wiley!

On 31 Oct 2012, a group of LAS members visited the Wiley office in Singapore. The following is a report from one of the member of the program committee:

The bad weather wasn’t part of the programme, but luckily we were armed with umbrellas on the 31 Oct afternoon for the visit to Wiley Singapore. The downpour since morning grew strong before 2pm and some of us were wet braving the shower towards the Solaris Tower. Some librarians shared a cab, but alas, they alighted at Fusionopolis Tower instead. Yes, Fusionopolis walk can be mistakenly remembered as Fusionopolis building. Despite the unfavorable weather, none of us were terribly late for the event which we were looking forward to.

I was pleasantly surprised by the number of Wiley staff who were in the meeting room. There was easily 8 of them, including the event helpers. Hospitality was warm and welcoming. Our librarians sat through the 2 introductory talks by Mr Mike Fenton (VP & Director of Global Operations) and Mr David Fisher (out-going Director, Sales and Marketing for Asia) about Wiley’s publishing role in Asia and Singapore. This was followed by a walk-around tour of their new office premise which occupied 3 floors of the Tower. The second part of the afternoon was back to the meeting room and with Professional & Development, Global Education and Scientific Technical Medical and Scholarly division representatives. Our librarians cleared their queries and discussed issues on copyright laws, customer surveys, e-books, etc. We were impressed with the knowledge and fervor that the Wiley staff had displayed for their trade. 3 sporting librarians also bagged a token for answering correctly during quiz time. Though, the event ran slightly beyond the scheduled hour, some librarians still stayed on for informal chats with Wiley staff during the networking session.

This is the first time visiting a book trade company after about 2 years and our organizing committee is encouraged by the response during registration. Cheers to our host too, for making this event possible and successful!

By Quek Tze Guek,
LAS Social and Programmes Committee

A photo for the occasion (more pictures available on our Facebook page):

December Editorial

Hi all, the end of the year beckons and a lot of folks would be busy with Christmas and end of year celebrations – so a happy festive season to all and of course for those of us who qualify – looking forward to your year-end bonuses!

This is also the traditional time to look back and reflect on the year as well as plan for next year.  The year has been quite eventful for LAS – we had a new team of council member recently taking the reins – our major event was of course the LAS conference LFT2012.  Looking ahead 2013 will be another milestone year for LAS as we will be hosting the IFLA WLIC2013 event.

For WLIC 2013, LAS is planning to have a souvenir publication – “Memory are made of these: 100-word stories from 100 Librarians” – we currently only have stories from about 30 plus librarians – yep we are quite short of stories, so Librarians in Singapore – please give us your submissions! You don’t have to worry about hitting the 100-word format exactly – we have an editorial team that can quickly help you with the technicalities – but what we do need are your memories and basic facts about your library experiences.  Please contribute actively – much thanks in advance!

Sad news received was that sometime last week, we learn of one of our librarians, Chan Luck passing on.  For the benefit of our younger members, it would be great for peers to contribute short articles about Chan Luck.  Please submit your articles to publications@las.org.sg for collation into a simple publication titled “In memory of Chan Luck”.  Thanks!

Yit