Building Inclusive Public Libraries in Singapore

Abstract

The National Library Board of Singapore (NLB) has made some headway in designing some services and programmes for persons with disabilities (PwD) in the past years. In the areas of collection, programmes and empowerment to work, these services aim to make the public library accessible for PwD. Despite the existing suite of services and programmes, more can and should be done to make PwD feel welcomed in the public libraries, so that both PwD and neurotypical users may co-exist, interacting with each other, building an inclusive culture. The setting up of Punggol Regional Library (PRL), scheduled to be ready in 2021, presents NLB with the opportunity to take stock of the existing services for PwD, and develop plans to strengthen space design, programmes, services and collection. The paper will cover NLB’s existing suite of services and programmes for people with disabilities, share on the learning points from a pilot to develop an inclusive storytelling programme, and, briefly touch on preliminary findings from the user research done in early 2018 that will shape the development of future libraries.