Acquiring, organising and providing access to digital content: The Singapore Memory Project experience

Led by the National Library Board (NLB), the Singapore Memory Project (SMP) is a long-term national programme under the National Library of Singapore (NLS) to enable the cultural and intellectual memory of Singapore to be collected, organised, preserved and promoted for discovery and research. The key outcome of the project is the building of a national digital collection of knowledge assets about Singapore. Institutional memories are central to a national collection and consist of the official published documentary content of Singapore. These already fall under the NLS’ collection purview. The advances in digital technology and the power of proliferation have allowed the SMP to collect more comprehensively beyond institutional collections. It is now possible to engage citizens on a national scale to collect personal memories through crowdsourcing in both physical and digital formats. Personal memories go beyond official published content to include personal narratives, some of which are just in people’s minds until they are captured by the SMP. The acquisition of institutional memories involved a massive digitisation programme of the NLS’ national collection and partners’ materials. Collection comprehensiveness and access clearances involved whole-of-nation collaborative initiatives as well as strategic partnerships with key content agencies, local and overseas. The acquisition of personal memories involved memory roadshows and leveraging on partners’ events in collection of handwritten memory cards which are then transcribed for digital ingestion. Digital memory contribution was achieved through the development of the SingaporeMemory.SG portal and an SMP iOS app for Apple mobile devices. In reducing barriers to digital contribution, the SMP also explored the harvesting of blogs, tweets, Facebook and Instagram, with their accompanying selection, archival, and access challenges. The SMP work has ultimately helped to highlight the important role that the NLS plays in safeguarding the documentary heritage and intellectual memory of Singapore.