“I am looking for information about my great-grandfather who lived in the Strait Settlements during the turn of the 20^th century.”

“I’m researching on the fashion history of Singapore, and I need articles and pictures of fashion shows of the past”.

 Until recently, such enquiries could probably only be satisfactorily answered after poring for hours over volumes of books and rolls of microfilms. With the digitisation of The Straits Times, users can now tap into the rich information found in newspapers, and locate answers to these questions within a shorter time.

Since March 2009, users have had access to over 548,000 pages searchable text from the digitised Straits Times (1845-1982) and microfilms of some 200 Singapore and Malaya newspapers held at the Lee Kong Chian Reference Library, through NewspaperSG (http://newspapers.nl.sg), an online initiative by the National Library.

Since its release, the digitised Straits Times has been particularly popular with family historians and researchers working on the various aspects of Singapore’s social history. Patrons have also found the website useful for locating pictures and advertisements of the past. We envisage that libraries with sizeable microfilm collections of the Straits Times will find the search facility useful for their patrons as well.

The service was made possible through a landmark agreement with the Singapore Press Holdings, sealed in 2007, which allowed the library to digitise and make available The Straits Times, from its earliest issue published in 1845, through the National Library Board (NLB)’s islandwide network of libraries for individual research and reference purposes.

Through NewspaperSG, library patrons can search, view and print full articles from the digitised newspaper collection through the multimedia stations (PC stations) in NLB libraries. Offsite users can also search the digitised content from the website, though the information provided is limited to the article title, date of publication, page number, microfilm number and a 50 words extract.

To further promote the discovery of archived Straits Times content through the Web, a “Table of Contents” of each Straits Times issue is generated and submitted to major search engines like Google for indexing. A number of users from Malaysia, Australia, Europe and the United States, have discovered NewspaperSG in this way.

The library is currently digitising the second half of The Straits Times (1983  – 2006). Issues from 2007 are digitally deposited and will be integrated with the rest of the digitised newspaper content.

Contributed by Gracie Lee, Lee Kong Chian Reference Library, National Library