(25 Mar 2021) Today is the first anniversary of the start of Aotearoa New Zealand’s Level 4 COVID-19 lockdown. At this time, one year ago today, one in five of the world’s population (around 1.7 billion people) were also experiencing some form of lockdown, including cancellations of public events and gatherings, stay-at-home recommendations and/or orders,…
(March 2021) Ten years have passed since the Great East Japan Earthquake. One of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded in Japan, it caused widespread damage to the eastern coastal region, especially in the northeast. The earthquake and subsequent tsunami took a heavy toll of lives and caused massive damage to buildings and facilities, including…
(17 Mar 2021) The Tang Tho Chamber, a national library under the Nguyen Dynasty, the last Vietnamese kings, has begun welcoming visitors in central Hue town after being closed for 75 years. The chamber displays more than 70,000 documents in diverse genres, including books in the ancient Vietnamese script of Han Nom, ancient bibliographies,…
(18 Mar 2021) Digital library usage spiked amid the pandemic last year but closures during the circuit breaker meant overall loans fell from 40.5 million in 2019 to 29.2 million. The number of Singapore residents using the National Library Board’s (NLB) digital channels went up by 46.5 per cent from 2019, its year-in-review report noted…
(28 Feb 2021) Historical records bearing the imprint of Singapore’s early Hokkien pioneers such as Tan Tock Seng and Tan Lark Sye will soon be made accessible to the public following the donation of more than 4,300 original documents from the Singapore Hokkien Huay Kuan (SHHK) made to the National Library Board (NLB) on Sunday (Feb 28).…
(17 Mar 2021) China is growing in dominance in Asia-Pacific collaborations, according to the Nature Index 2021 Asia Pacific supplement, published today. The supplement draws on Nature Index data to track trends in research output and collaboration in the Asia-Pacific region. The strongest partnership in the region is between Australia and China, however among leading APAC countries…
(25 Feb 2021) At a recent public hearing, the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) called for the Australian Government to modernise current library lending rights schemes, with additional funding for a digital lending right to include ebooks and audiobooks. Appearing with the Australian Libraries Copyright Committee (ALCC) and the Australian Society of Authors (ASA)…
Japan’s National Diet Library has 4.45 million items in its digital quake database, including over a million photos; physical artefacts are in regional museums Curators are working to make the items easily available to the general public and to preserve remnants of the disaster before they are lost (10 Mar 2021) In Japan, efforts…
(3 Mar 2021) St Agnes College has become the first college under Mangalore University, to tag library books with RFIDs. Over 62,000 books have been tagged. Pegged at a cost of Rs 20 lakh, the new RFID tag will replace the old bar code system at the college library. Read more from the original…
(6 Mar 2021) The 2-hour webinar was hosted by LIANZA, at the National Library of New Zealand, for the IFLA Regional Standing Committee for Asia and Oceania (RSCAO) – it was the latest in the series of annual seminars accompanying the mid-term business meetings of RSCAO. Guest speakers from the USA, Singapore, India, Fiji and…