The Library Of Alexandria Award goes to NUS library’s ‘operational lapse’

SINGAPORE – What ancient fire destroyed the Library of Alexandria continues to be the stuff of legends, and its loss has been mourned throughout the ages. Did the Roman general Julius Caesar set the temple of knowledge on fire during a civil war? Did Arab invaders burn scrolls and artefacts to use as fuel for the Egyptian city’s bath houses?

When the National University of Singapore (NUS)

destroyed 500 books from the Yale-NUS College Library

, the university’s apology and explanation for its destruction was more straightforward – there was an

“operational lapse”

. If not for an outcry from students on May 20, that lapse might have leapt 18 times to the disposal of

9,000 books

.

“We did not realise there was interest from students, and we did not make enough arrangements to allow students to have the opportunity to own those books,” said NUS university librarian Natalie Pang on May 21. Commentators lamented that while books were destroyed in the past because they were powerful, these archaic objects are now destroyed because they have become obsolete.

On May 28, students and faculty offered a resounding rebuttal by turning up in droves for the book adoption fair NUS organised for the remaining 8,500 books. Gripping tightly on to stacks of hardback academic tomes and literary classics, these book lovers walked out of the emptying library with a sense of relief that these reverential objects of study had been saved from the fire.

Can a university really expect its students to not be interested in books? Just look at how more than 10,000 members of the general Singapore public turned up to pick up over 71,000 pre-loved books when the National Library Board organised its big book giveaway on Sept 13 and 14.

Books have always aroused great emotions in its advocates and lovers. In The Library Book (2018), a book about a library arson case, American journalist Susan Orlean wrote: “I have come to believe that books have souls – why else would I be so reluctant to throw one away?”

Closer to home, artist Shubigi Rao – who represented Singapore at the Venice Biennale 2022 – has spent close to a decade documenting the banished book.

Later, The Straits Times reported that

student associates were also asked to destroy more than 100 DVDs

– including classic and contemporary films – in the lead-up to Yale-NUS College’s permanent closure. In the year that

indie cinema The Projector

and

Cathay Cineplexes

shuttered, this seems, in retrospect, an even bigger tragedy.

This award, therefore, remembers the 500 books and 100 DVDs that were banished, in the long history of book destruction. As Singapore embraces the digital realm more wholeheartedly, there will likely be diminishing space for physical books. To the custodians of the book, this award is a plea to find books a new home before consigning them to the trash heap of history.