At present, Woodlands Library is the biggest and most heavily used public library in Singapore. It occupies a floor area of 11,000 square metres with an average of 7,000 users per day. Their Librarian, Mr. Darwin Tay, introduced the various services to us. The top or fourth floor was the Children Library. It is designed to create a relaxed atmosphere for reading and playing. There is a regular exhibition called the Windows to the World. Exhibits, displayed inside an huge attractive globe, include interesting items and toys that reflect culture from foreign countries. Items on display will rotate every 3 months. The third floor is the Adult Library. Popular just-returned items were simply placed on an eye-catching shelf. This saves re-shelving time as many users might want to get hold of these books as soon as they become available.
Altogether, there are 420,000 volumes of books and 6,000 video items in Woodlands. As with other NLB libraries, call number labels are colour-coded for easy shelving and location of misshelved items. The second floor is the Reference Library and the reference desk. We were told that each month there were more than 80,000 enquiries. A consultation room is right next to the reference desk. Darwin told us that the room offered a private space for librarians to meet angry users. There are also several project rooms for group projects and discussions as well.
The NLB regards RFID as the key technology to free precious manpower for high quality library and information services. In Woodlands, we saw the actual material processing of putting RFID tags onto books. At the moment, the Library is conducting a retrospective conversion project. A pair of staff can tag more than 500 items a day and update the associated computer records.
We must express our gratitude to the hospitality of the NLB. In Woodlands, we were not only treated with light refreshments, Mrs. Jennifer Yin, the Director of Community and International Relations, also met us and gave an excellent presentation on the vision of the Board and future developments of public library services in Singapore. Their mission is to expand the learning capacity of the nation and bring libraries to the people. Mrs. Yin comes from a mass media background. She is proud that NLB is an open and dynamic organization that nurtures a synergy of talents from different background; libraries, IT, business and media.
The first or ground floor keeps popular items, i.e. magazines and AV
materials. There is also a large exhibition area on the same floor.
At the time of visit, there was an exhibition of maps of Southeast Asia.
We were excited to learn that these maps were loaned by Mr. S. C. Tam, the
renowned map collector of Hong Kong.
Adult Library
Children Library 
Presentation by Mrs. Yin 