Contemporary Collecting

Help us build a visual snapshot of our local and diverse culture today by contributing your memories and records of life in Singapore to our Contemporary Collecting themes on Young Singapore and Singapore Makan.

About Contemporary Collecting

Contemporary collecting is an important aspect of NLB’s work. It looks at the acquisition and preservation of materials that represent not only our distant past, but also our recent history. These materials can be collected and contributed by individuals, organisations, and institutions to capture the essence of what life is like in 21st-century Singapore—socially, culturally, politically and economically. By documenting experiences and stories, future generations can better understand and appreciate the unique contributions of today’s Singaporeans to the city-state's cultural tapestry.

 

Contemporary Collecting


We are taking a thematic approach in collecting the many aspects that make up Singapore society. More details on the collecting themes (e.g. Food, Youth Culture, etc.) and the types of information we are looking to collect will be announced via our crowdsourcing portal, Singapore Memories: Documenting Our Stories Together.

 

Some examples of what we might collect are:

  1. photo and video contributions of your favourite meals, your favourite places to eat, or your daily groceries to build a visual record of Singapore’s local delicacies under the Food theme,
  2. Social media accounts or websites that youths follow in keeping up with lifestyle, fashion, music, trends, and
  3. records of your school days, interests and hobbies, as part of documenting Singapore’s youth culture.

 



NLB invites you to contribute materials based on our themes. These could include photographs, videos, audios social media accounts (YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter), websites, publications, posters and more, to capture the changing contemporary landscape in early 21st-century Singapore for future generations to discover. Your contributions will be assessed for addition into our collection and made available for public access in time to come. These materials could be utilised in future for various purposes such as exhibitions, public seminars and research.  

 

You may submit materials of which you are the owner or creator, or nominate websites and content. In the case of the latter, NLB will reach out to the owner for permission to add the content to our collection.

 

For enquiries, please contact the NLB Contemporary Collecting Team at contemporary_collecting@nlb.gov.sg.

 



NLB is looking for volunteers to be part of the documenting team for the current collecting themes of Singapore Makan and Young Singapore to collect or create materials that tell others about our local food and youth culture. Basic training will be provided by librarians from the National Library. Your work could be added into the national collection and become important historical references for current and future generations. Send an email to contemporary_collecting@nlb.gov.sg indicating which initiative (Singapore Makan/Young Singapore) you are interested in for more information.