As part of the conference on When Nations Remember, the work that was being done in Singapore was highlighted.

Gene Tan, National Library Board, talked about the Singapore Memory Project. Apart from the larger contributors to the SMP, NLB would like to create a “long tail” of small contributors. They are exploring different avenues to collect memories of individuals and then to make it accessible to the public. One way is through Facebook where they have irememberSG to encourage the public to submit their stories. NLB has also been conducting workshops to propogate the process further.

Local bloggers like Lam Chun See and Char Lee talked about their sites. Lam Chun See reminisced about the Singapore he knew on his blog Good Morning Yesterday. He found that blogging was a good way to connect with the young and also with a host of other people interested in Singapore’s history. He connected with some British who had lived in Singapore and had found his site. They have shared some of their photographs with him, contributed  their stories, some have even flown in to Singapore and met up with him.

Char Lee has a site called Second Shot. He specializes in photographing a place in the present at the same angle as in an archival photograph, which is known as “precision heritage photography”. He provides the photographic evidence and also adds a textual account. He used as an example, his quest to do a “second shot”of the former National Library at Stamford Road.

The passion of our local bloggers came across clearly. They do this in their spare time as a hobby but with great enthusiasm.

There were other parallel sessions on other projects in Singapore which I did attend. I would welcome contributions that covered the other sessions. Send them to slb@las.org.sg.

Contributed by Yeo Pin Pin