NewspaperSG was officially launched on 28 January 2010 by Guest of Honour, Mr Sam Tan, Parliamentary Secretary for Ministry of Trade and Industry and Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts.

With the launch, library patrons can search, browse and retrieve full-text news content from as many as 17 newspapers titles through the multimedia stations at the National Library Board’s (NLB) network of libraries. NewspaperSG (newspapers.nl.sg), an online service initiative of the National Library Singapore will also provide library patrons access to selected full text archived news content conveniently from the comfort of their homes through the Internet.

The use of keyword searches in NewspaperSG represents a significant leap in time-savings for both general users and researchers as before the introduction of NewspaperSG, users could only access archived newspaper articles by searching through reels of microfilms manually.

To mark the launch of NewspaperSG, the National Library Singapore organised an exhibition in collaboration with SPH and Mediacorp Press on “Yesterday’s Newspapers”.

The exhibition features selected newspaper articles from The Straits Times and TODAY newspapers on topics that affect the daily lives of Singaporeans such as politics, economy, public housing, public transport, national campaigns, entertainment, fashion, crimes, disasters and sports.

Readers can take a step back into time to appreciate the pertinent issues faced by Singaporeans in the past. The exhibition, held at the Promenade, Level 7 of the National Library Building is open to the public daily from 10am to 9pm (except during the Chinese New Year holidays) till 11 March 2010.

To access NewspaperSG, log onto : newspapers.nl.sg

Contributed by: Sharmini Chellapandi