Singapore’s latest mall library will open in VivoCity on 12 January 2019, which offer conducive reading spaces for patrons of all ages set against a splendid view of Sentosa.
The National Library Board stated that to fit its location and help patrons locate it easily, the library will be named library@harbourfront.
The library is situated at level three of the VivoCity shopping mall, which is conveniently linked to the HarbourFront MRT station.
The station is connected to the North-East and Circle lines, and the HarbourFront Bus Interchange.
The NLB’s Chief Executive Officer, Mrs Elaine Ng, said, “We want our libraries to be as accessible as possible, so that more patrons of all ages can make use of the library to read and learn.”
The 460-seat library span 3,000 sq m, or about half a football field, which makes it the biggest library to be located in a mall. It houses a collection of about 200,000 books, magazines and audio-visual materials.
The library was relocated from Bukit Merah Central, which had ceased its operations from 1 December 2018. Hoever, many residents of the area initially rejected the relocation plan and started a petition to keep the library in its original location, where it had been a fixture since 1982.
The board stated that the library is designed with two distinct zones – one for adults and teens and another for children – to provide conducive spaces and enhanced services that suit their reading and learning needs.
The board designed the children’s area to enable them to learn through technology. There is an area called Tinker Truck, which provides augmented reality books on various topics, such as animals, space, and body health. There are QR codes on the books, which parents can scan using a mobile application downloaded from Apple or Google Play Store, to make the books come alive.
Children can make paper crafts and explore word puzzles through DIY learning materials to help them develop problem-solving and early literacy skills.
The board stated that it will work with partners to run programmes related to science, technology, engineering, the arts and mathematics on a monthly basis.
Space has also been carved out for projecting videos on all three walls of the room, using light and sound effects to provide a more immersive storytelling experience.
In the adult corner, the board set up 12 reading corners in the area, offering over 5,000 books and 250 seats in total. It also replaced physical newspapers with 16 e-newspaper reading stations – the most in any public library in Singapore.
The board added that the library will also offer weekly virtual reality sessions for visitors and provide interactive tools like Google Voyager.
Currently, the library has 150 volunteers and the board said that there are more to come in the future.
The board noted that it is expected to draw about 1.5 million visitors annually, three times the number seen at the Bukit Merah library.
