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):