CILIP Conference Keynote, Chief Librarian and Chief Innovation Officer at the National Library Board of Singapore, Gene Tan, talks to Rob Green about how technology is helping to grow engagement. Building from the necessity of innovation during the COVID epidemic to a new landscape where digital and physical discovery is seamless.

THE National Library Board (NLB) of Singapore has responsibility for the country's public library services, its National Archives and its National Library.

"[We] harness tech and digital to help our users to discover content and communities to give them joy and abilities."

"As NLB's Chief Librarian, (more on his role as Chief Innovation Officer later), Gene heads up an organisation that touches on millions of people's lives every year – from research and government to reading and culture, NLB's services reach an enviable percentage of Singapore's population. Gene says: "We manage not only the public libraries but also the National Library and the National Archives. Collectively, we have reached between seven and eight in every 10 citizens in any given year – an amazing feat in terms of penetration and engagement. The National Library and National Archives are also key memory institutions taking care of our publishing heritage, and government and public records. They are both go-to sources for our historians, students and anyone interested in knowing more about Singapore, past, present and increasingly, the future."

The success of NLB's engagement is something Gene is rightly proud of, and his experience outside of the library world gives a clue as to how that success is achieved. He says: "I've been a librarian always, all my working life. But I also stepped out. As the Executive Director of the Singapore Bicentennial Office at the Prime Minister's Office, I helmed the Singapore Bicentennial which commemorated the 200th anniversary of Raffles' arrival in Singapore in 1819, which marked the beginning of modern Singapore. I was also the Creative Director of the SG50 Exhibition: The Future of Us that captured the hopes and dreams of Singaporeans. Both broke records for Singapore."

Back with the NLB, Gene is able to draw on the organisation's innovative past to help shape its future. He says digital services are "in our DNA," explaining that successful implementation of technology has to be user-focused.

"[We] harness tech and digital to help our users to discover content and communities to give them joy and abilities. And yet not so in-your-face that it takes over our services that are at the end of the day about engagement. It's about facilitating our services to remove the pain and inconvenience so that our patrons get to what they need and want more seamlessly. After all, I remember the 1998 implementation of the world's first electronic library management system at NLB using RFID for borrowing and returning of our materials."

Like many library services, the global pandemic signalled an opportunity for library services. Measures to keep a safe distance from others helped to cement digital materials as go-to choice for many and public libraries in Singapore have been able to build on that.

"Our patrons have embraced it with the use of our digital materials increasing year on year especially after COVID-19. When COVID-19 safe distancing measures were enacted in Singapore, NLB promoted our digital collection as a way for people to continue reading without visiting the libraries. We saw enthusiastic take-up and saw digital loans grow 27 per cent, from 8.6 million in 2019 to 10.9 million in 2020. Digital loans maintained strong momentum well beyond COVID-19, reaching 14.8 million in 2024, representing a further 36 per cent increase since 2020. As of 2024, digital loans constitute approximately four in 10 of all NLB loans, highlighting the significance of digital resources."

And while COVID provided an additional impetus for users to embrace digital access, the library service has been able to take that online engagement and transfer it to physical visits. Library users do not always favour one form or interaction over the other, as Gene points out. These visitors have been dubbed "phygital" – hybrid customers who use both physical and digital services.

"These tech innovations have also made our libraries places to go. Our visitorship has been recovering after the hit during the pandemic and we are increasingly seeing more and more phygital customers. They also stick around more year on year, so we are encouraging this kind of hybrid use through omnichannel engagement. Among NLB's active users, 24.9 per cent are phygital users who engage with both traditional services like borrowing physical books and digital offerings such as eBooks and online newspapers."

These digital services are core to how NLB works, they are not gimmicks and each innovation is about improving the user experience. Gene is keen to ensure that digital services help to lower the barrier to access, especially to those who are not traditionally comfortable with using technology.

"Yes, we [Singaporeans] are very well connected and that helps a lot! But a sizable chunk of the population – just like any other well-connected country – either needs help to level up or are still fearful of the harms of technology. So, we aspire in a lot of our tech innovations to make technology – in Arthur C. Clarke's words – disappear like magic. This is really the best way to lower the barrier to entry for those still sceptical or less familiar to come in and experience the service before we introduce any technology that comes with it."

Gene's team of librarians are the ones who help to make the technology "disappear like magic". He says: "Our librarians are at the heart of the development of these services – from our ILS to our mobile library app – to ensure our users are able to discover what they need. They are also vital in how we engage with users with promotion and education at every opportunity on using them. Though I would say at the end of the day, a digital service really just needs to speak for itself (and be used for itself) with minimal intervention. Anything more that it needs really means it is doomed for a quick demise!

"So even for our core library services like our mobile app where most users go to discover our content (physical and otherwise), we are experimenting. The language we are using in our latest prototype is the infinite feed from social media. The best way I can describe this is a healthy fascination! To be fascinated by exploring more, broadening horizons – rather than to be sucked into the echo chambers of polarisation."

Beyond the core

That spirit of experimentation and exploration in the digital world is helping to develop more than the NLB's core services. It is opening new ways of engagement with collections. Artificial Intelligence is helping to unlock archives in ways that were hard to imagine just a few years ago, and again it is the library team that is leading this innovation.

"The impetus is always to create a memorable experience that will bring joy, especially when you least expect it," says Gene. "I find that in the process, we also solve a lot of problems. So recently we have ventured into rethinking the storytelling and reference service with a leg up from Gen AI. That is important – a leg up and not taken over fully by Gen AI."

Gen AI has been utilised in a number of projects for NLB, including StoryGen and ChatBook – two projects that deliver engagement in different ways. Gene explains: "We asked ourselves the question: how can we leverage Gen AI to draw from our wealth of resources from our libraries and archives – published books, research materials, and other trustworthy sources – to answer any questions that patrons may have.

"ChatBook is a chat service, but what makes it unique to the NLB is that it is closely connected to collections, helping patrons to discover answers specific to the Singapore's libraries and archives. StoryGen use Gen AI to create immersive multimedia experiences for library users, drawing on NLB resources. Gene adds: "We had a lot of fun. We recently even did a haunted house edition with a horror base story written by a notable Singaporean writer!"

Again, in-house teams were pivotal to the whole process. Gene says: "Our internal team of librarians, archivists and I worked very closely with tech partners to build these, testing in limited prototypes rigorously and then scaling up for the public. The secret sauce to how we did this so quickly was that we pre-visualised every step of the way and then keep iterating relentlessly. Both prototypes came out in a matter of months and with feedback, we went back, further developed them and rolled them out again.

"Both have been massively popular reaching more than 200,000 in a short time. To accompany these, we had a massive public education campaign on Gen AI, digital literacy and deepfakes through our S.U.R.E. (Source, Understand, Research, Evaluate) initiative that reached 2.5 million. I guess that is what a library does – even as we delight, we educate and inform. It's in our blood."

And Gene reveals that innovation at NLB is part of a wider strategy, LAB 25 – Libraries and Archives Blueprint 2025, that he is leading in his Chief Innovation Officer role. This is setting a direction for NLB that is helping to empower staff to deliver transformative change.

He says: "NLB and our library system are known nationally to be innovative and dynamic – there really is a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get there and keep going. I have no illusions about this all being a fairytale. We have doubts all the time and I certainly live constantly with uncertainty!

"But what we have also learned – and this is a key aspect of LAB25, hence the acronym – is that the only way to address the doubts and uncertainty is to take action, to experiment, and to learn what (not) to do next.

"I like that personally too as I cannot stand inertia or fear that keeps festering. So, when teams and staff have ideas, we say – work on them! But do so in a way that is fail fast and fail small. Only when we have done sufficient prototypes will we scale up system-wide. Though I have to say that we still do not stop tinkering even then!"

And while there is experimentation in the development process, Gene says it is also important to consider the wider impact of projects on the organisation, its users and stakeholders – as well as being aware of what lessons can be learnt on the way.

"I've always felt that in any tech project that it is vital that we step outside the room to know what people outside think about it. Honestly, it is something we should do for any project. For Gen AI, it is even more critical as it can be so contentious. So that is something I always say to my tech partners when we are collaborating.

"Besides being extremely careful with our prototypes by ensuring that any content that we use is never ingested by or used to train an external LLM, we also had to ensure everything is done in a protected environment only accessible by NLB.

"On top of that, we limited the creativity of the LLM we use to query our dataset to ensure hallucination is down to its minimum. Further, we also make sure we always have sources and public education links so that our patrons can also have a learning and discovery moment after enjoying our Gen AI-enabled services.

"Ultimately, it is also about sharing this with our stakeholders including the creative community. Listening empathetically and understanding their anxieties while also making sure we always work with them is a huge lesson I have learned. Recently I went beyond more intimate settings to meeting with larger groups as I realised there were gaps in understanding what we were doing. Happy to say that that worked!"

Gene Tan will be a keynote speaker at this year's CILIP Conference, where you can find out more about how the National Library Board of Singapore is embracing innovation to deliver better and more accessible services now and into the future.

This article was first published in CILIP's Information Professional magazine. To read more from Information Professional you can subscribe here.