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Asian Collection of Children's Books

The Asian Collection of Children's Books was one of the special collections maintained by the National Reference Library, National Library, at 91 Stamford Road. It is a non-circulating research collection of books on Asia written for children. This collection was housed in the Southeast Asia Room of the National Reference Library as a reference collection. It was consulted mostly by writers of children's books, teachers, researchers in Asian children's literature,book illustrators and publishers and overseas Children's Librarians.

History
The Asian Collection of Children' s Books started as a resource collection for library staff use. In the National Library Children's Section, storytelling was one of the programmes used to encourage and promote reading amongst children. Children's Librarians made use of the books in the collection to conduct their storytelling programmes.

Scope
1. Books in English, Malay, Chinese and Tamil with an Asian setting or with Asian characters, written and published in Asia or elsewhere.
2. The scope encompasses the geographical area bounded by Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Asiatic Russia, Mongolia, Japan, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia.
3. Children's books published in Singapore, including primary school textbooks and magazines.
4. Guides, bibliographies and studies on Asian children's literature and reading.

Age Level
The books are for children up to the age of 14 years. Books suitable for 15-19 years and those that are borderline between Young People/Adult, even if subject content is within the scope of collection are excluded. Fiction/non-fiction accounts of the Vietnam War are selected carefully as they tend to have stark descriptions, so much so that even if the language used is simple, they are unsuitable for the younger teens and older children.

Selection
Selection for this Collection is done by Librarians who read/scan children's book review journals and publishers' catalogues and children's booklists. It is ongoing. The Children's & Young People's Materials Section of the Library Supply Service, National Library Board, orders one copy of any title that falls within the scope of the collection. Legal deposit copies of locally published children's books are also added to this Collection.

The Collection
The Asian Collection of Children's Books totalling about 4,500 volumes is mainly in English. It contains children's picture books, story books, folk and fairy tales of Asia, and nonfiction titles on Asia with emphasis on China, Japan, Korea, India and the 10 Asean countries.

The Collection was built up over the years by many Children's Librarians of the National Library. Prominent among them were Eleanor Smith, Emerald Klass, Mavis Siregar and Vilasini Perumbulavil (known as Mrs. P among staff members). Perumbulavil was the Co-ordinator of Children's Services of the National Library and a specialist in Asian Children's literature.

The collection was transferred to the Library Support Service Centre at Changi in 1997 when the National Reference Library closed for renovations. It is currently kept as a stack collection in the Library Support Service Centre. New titles are still being selected by a Librarian and added to the Collection. In the new National Library building to be built by the year 2005, it is envisaged to house the Collection individually as a Special Collection.



Author
Wong Heng



References
Perumbulavil, V. (1976). Children's books and reading in a plural society. Singapore Libraries, 6, pp. 1-5,
(Call no.: RCLOS 020.5 SL) 

The information in this article is valid as at 1999 and correct as far as we are able to ascertain from our sources. It is not intended to be an exhaustive or complete history on the subject. Please contact the Library for further reading materials on the topic.

Subject
Arts>>Literature
Libraries--Special collections--Singapore
Library resources--Singapore
Language and literature>>Literatures>>Children's literature
Science and technology>>Library and information science>>Library and information services



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