LINUS October 1996

Library News

Science Library is 10

This year the Science Library celebrates its tenth anniversary. Despite the fact that it is a decade old, the Science Library is a young library within the NUS Library System. It had a simple but exciting beginning. After all, it was the first library designed and planned by a committee consisting of our own library staff chaired by Ms Sylvia Yap, Head-Designate of Science Library. When the Library opened its doors on 19 May 1986, visitors were obviously thrilled by the bright primary colours interspersed on a background of grey and biege and the warm ambience of the Library.

The Science Library has since developed into a full-fledged library serving nine departments in the Faculty of Science. The early years were devoted to intensive resource building. The initial collection transferred from the Central Library, which had served the faculty before the move, has now grown from the 110,000 volumes to approximately 203,000 volumes of books and bound periodicals. Current periodical titles have also increased from less than 1,200 titles to more than 2,000 titles. The collection now strongly features the study of orchid culture, artificial intelligence, and molecular and cell biology, with new areas in computational science, materials sci ence, and remote sensing.

The development of Science Library would not have been possible without the foresight, expertise and dedication of its Heads and all its staff. Ms Sylvia Yap, the first Head of the Library (1986- 1989), was succeeded for short periods by Ms Ng Kim Leong and Mrs Esther Ong. In 1990 Mr Ng Kok Koon was appointed Head and he has been directing the Science Library ever since.

Staff of Science Library, with Ng Kok Koon the Head, first from the right in the second row.

Over the years, the Science Library has actively pursued technological advancement in relation to its resource management and service development.

As early as 1989, a computerized library tour program called ZEN (Zoom-in Encylopedic Navigator) was introduced to our students for library orientation.

In 1989 when online searching was relatively new in the region, the Library set up the STN online search service. This enabled our researchers to search Chemical Abstracts by chemical structures.

In 1990 at a time when CD-ROM publishing was still a recent phenomenon, the Library acquired the Science Citation Index on CD-ROM. Since then, many of our basic print indexes in the various disciplines have been converted to CD-ROM access. Lately, full text multimedia databases have also been added to the collection. The number of CD-ROM titles now totals 43.

Our CD-ROM services were greatly enhanced when the first discs of the Science Citation Index were mounted on NUSNET in 1992. Other CD-ROM titles on the network quickly followed: Biotechnology Abstracts (1992), Inspec (1995), Biological Abstracts (1995), Current Contents (1996) and CA on CD (1996).

In 1995 the Library began converting NUS examination papers into electronic documents. The EXAM database is now accessible through Library InfoGate on NUSNET. At the same time, the Library stopped its manual circulation of selected journal contents pages to the teaching departments as they are now available through Library InfoGate.

Our latest venture in 1996 is the subscription of electronic journals. Currently more than 20 titles are subscribed, including the Journal of Molecular Biology, International Mathematics Research Notes as well as a number of journals published by the Institute of Physics and by Les Editions de Physique. These full text journals are now directly accessible on the NUS Library's Web pages.

From CD-ROM services to electronic document storage and retrieval to electronic journals on the Web, the Science Library has indeed kept pace with changing publishing trends and advances in information technology. However, much remains to be done. For in this electronic era, the Library foresees exciting developments and new challenges in its next decade ahead.