I am angry and very disappointed with National Library Board, Singapore for withdrawing certain books from circulation and restricting public access to certain childrens’ books because a few individuals with narrow, intolerant views have a certain fixed idea of how a family ought to be! These actions are so backwards and despicable - we cannot allow intolerance and censorship to pass without comment or protest! Books should never be censored; the books in our libraries represent the diversity of the thoughts, hopes, dreams, and stories of different people, whether or not we agree with them. It should never be about forcing your views or beliefs onto other people; I believe that people should be allowed freedom to access any books or information that they want, and then from there, they should be allowed to have the freedom to make their own opinions about it. Only the people whose arguments do not hold water, and who are afraid of people understanding the truth will want to remove or restrict peoples access to books and literature in the first place! When I see something like this written out in print and in black and white terms, I am concerned what this means for the future of Singaporean books and archives. What I write a book that someone else in the distant future doesnt like or agree with? Will my books be withdrawn from circulation and cast into a dark dungeon, never to be seen again? We demand clarification on NLB’s policy on how the books and materials in our national libraries (whether in public access or reference sections) will be handled - now and in the future. -------------------------------- * This is a rewriting of my original post earlier in the morning. Someone seems to be doing some social media cleanup at the moment and taking down Facebook posts. My original post sharing that post thus vanished, so Ive included a screenshot of that shared post containing the letter from Ms Tay Ai Cheng, Assistant Chief Executive & Chief Librarian, NLB. (Credit to Mothership.sg) ** Thanks Godwin Koay for pointing out that if you want to take some productive action, you can recommend titles to be added to the public collection here: https://eservice.nlb.gov.sg/recommendatitle/recommendatitle.aspx (Although I am not totally convinced this will be the solution - the question we really need to ask is: who are the gatekeepers of the books in our public libraries?) *** Just as I had finished rewriting this entire post from memory, someone managed to find my original post in an open tab - thanks so much! Ive included it as a picture as well and now I am going to take a screenshot of this post just in case... **** NLBs public feedback form is here if you want to write to them as well: nlb.gov.sg/Feedback.aspx
Posted on: Tue, 08 Jul 2014 10:18:03 +0000