Final Day!

This was our last full day in Hong Kong. Mollie went her separate way today and visited a local monastery. She saw "the largest sitting Buddha in the world", and bought a small laughing Buddha. Carl and I took the ferry to Kowloon for more shopping. The money over here looks so much more interesting than American dollars, but unfortunately that makes it seem not quite real--kind of like monopoly money--so it's deceptively easy to overspend (don't worry dear, I didn't go TOO overboard!). And Barb, I bought something new for librarians' meetings that's got your wacka wacka beat!

After shopping, Carl & I took the tram up to Victoria Peak, the highest point on the island. This tram travels up the incline at up to a 45 degree angle in some places. On the ride back down, we had to stand. When it got to the steepest part of the incline, a little Chinese lady held on to my arm to keep me from sliding. Carl said he would have taken a picture but thought it would have been rude. He said it was the funniest sight to see her holding on to me when I'm so much bigger than her. While we were on the Peak, we did some more shopping, had dinner, and then watched the light show in the harbor. Every evening the buildings light up and change colors for several minutes. My dusk picture turned out okay, but my picture of the light show may be too dark for you to see much.

It has been really odd spending so much time with a man other than my husband. Add to that the fact that my husband and I haven't spent more than 2 or 3 days apart in our 25 years of marriage. It's been tough on both of us. But tomorrow we'll be heading back home so we'll see other soon now. Unfortunately, we have an interminable Monday ahead of us. Our flight leaves here around 1pm Monday, lands in San Francisco around 8:35am Monday, then lands in Baltimore around 7:15pm Monday. In Baltimore time, the trip back will begin at about midnight Sunday.

This will be the last post on this blog. I hope everyone back home has enjoyed vicariously traveling to Asia with us. We've had a great time and can't wait to get back and share more of the trip.

Sneaks Does Asia

You may not have realized that Sneaks came with us to Asia. Mollie brought some Sneaks dolls to give as gifts and I brought my T-shirt. You can't see it very well, but Sneaks saw several street meat vendors. (They might even have been selling some of his relatives, but we won't go there!) There's also a picture of the offerings of one of the vegetable vendors. The boat in the picture is a sampan. Mollie took a ride on one to see a fishing village where the people actually live on the boat year round.
In the background is the world's largest floating restaurant.

We took a sightseeing tour today so we could see a little more of the island. Our guide was very good and told us many interesting things about Hong Kong. Hong means fragrant and Kong means harbor. It was named this because there used to be an incense factory whose smell scented the air. Most people here live in very small apartments in high rise buildings. A family sized apartment is about 1000 sq ft. Only rich people own cars because the import tax is 150%; the average cost of a car is $200,000 (HK$, divide by 7 for US$) but taxes more than double that cost. Also a gallon of gas costs about $7 (US). Only very rich people live in single family homes;most of the rich people also live in apartments--they are just in better neighborhoods and VERY expensive--$7,000 (US) per month.

It is incredibly crowded here! Think New York multiplied. Carl has some great footage of the crowds. Sometimes you feel as if you're salmon swimming upstream. There are all kinds of restaurants here, but I have yet to see any restaurant here with cereal. And it seems as if many Asians don't have different foods for breakfast; they just eat their usual foods such as noodles and rice dishes.

Tomorrow Mollie is going to visit a monastery while Carl & I go across the bay to Kowloon. We're hoping to see the evening light show from the height of Victoria Peak at 8pm.

Mollie and Carl are quite content to let me do all the blogging. Carl said to tell everyone Hi, but he came over here to get away from computers. (Don't tell Mollie, but I think she's just too wimpy to blog!) :-)

Whirlwind Day!

We had a very quick tour throughout the Hong Kong Central Library (pictured) this morning, a traditional Chinese banquet for lunch (9 courses), and a ride out to the New Territories for a quick tour of a district library (serving a population of about 200,000). Let me just say that when we talk about our libraries being busy, we don't even know the meaning of the word. The Central library circulates 10,000 items per day and sees 14,000 people a day! Even their smaller libraries have much higher statistics than we have. Their numbers are staggering, as were Singapore's. The importance of libraries is so ingrained in the culture over here; both governments give strong support to libraries and emphasize lifelong learning.

The library we visited in the afternoon was probably about the size of one of our area branches; there were probably at least 2oo customers in there. The reading room was packed and so was their student study room. The study room is a room filled with cubicles for single student study; it had about 140 seats. From March-May, these rooms are in such demand that students have to sign up for 4 hr blocks of time to use them. At that time of year, they also extend the hours of the study rooms beyond the library's normal hours. We were told that these are so popular because people here live in small apartments in high rise buildings (25-30 stories high) and they don't have good study space at home. Also Hong Kong doesn't have the number of book stores that we saw in Singapore so people are more likely to come to the library.

Hong Kong also uses the postal system as their delivery system, but it takes 3-5 days for material to get between locations. The road and street traffic here reminds us of New York but with narrower streets.

The senior staff with whom we spoke all indicated that they work very long hours. They start at 7am and often work until 7 or 8pm. One of them said she worked from 7am-midnight! Jim, will you, Debbie & Lynn be trying that?

The Hong Kong library staff made it clear that they felt extremely honored for us to be here. We got the sense that they feel kind of ignored, that Singapore libraries get all the attention. There is some tension between the two areas. As one of our hosts said, "If you want to breathe clean air, go to Singapore. If you want to breathe free air, go to Hong Kong." It's interesting to me that they feel more free in their Communist controlled country than people in Singapore. The Hong Kong librarians were constantly mentioning that there are certain things they can't do because of customer privacy issues or copyright concerns--things that would infringe on someone's personal rights. (In fact, we couldn't take pictures after they opened because of privacy issues for their customers.) In Singapore, everything is about the common good--forget personal rights.

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Hong Kong Welcome

Tonight we were welcomed to Hong Kong by several librarians and administrators from Hong Kong libraries and the library committee. I wore my new suit and shoes, and we dined at the Excelsior Hotel on a 10 course meal. I tried everything tonight including jellyfish and roasted pork skin. The official menu (I brought home a copy) was:
barbecued combination platter
sauteed scallops and deep fried with vegetables
minced winter melon soup with crab meat
sweet and sour garoupa (a fish) with pineapple
braised assorted vegetables with deep fried mushrooms
steamed chicken with ham
fried rice with seafood
braised e-fu noodles (no it's not a typo) with abalone sauce
sweetened walnut cream
seasonal fresh fruit platter (the only "normal" thing I had all evening besides my diet coke!)

Mollie and I were at the same table with several of their "chief" librarians and had a wonderful time sharing information about libraries and each other. Hong Kong has about 3.5 million registered users and does a circulation of 62 million (or 65-I can't remember). Chimene Ho (one of the librarians) gave the impression that their libraries are wall-to-wall people. Their average branch library has a collection of about 115,000 volumes and does about 1 million circ a year. Tomorrow we visit the Central library and 2 libraries in the New Territories. Hong Kong libraries are divided into four areas: Hong Kong Island, New Territories, and if I understood them correctly, Sai Kung Peninsula,and Lantau Island. I'm really looking forward to tomorrow!

Hong Kong--first impressions

My first impression of Hong Kong is lots of people, tall buildings, not as clean as Singapore, and shopkeepers aren't as versed in English as they were in Singapore. Our hotel is on a little side street, what feels like an alley amid skyscrapers. Here's the view out of my 12th floor window.

Tonight we have a welcome banquet. I can't wait to see this menu! I'm going to wear my new hand-tailored suit by Picadilly Tailors. :-) I went shopping today to get some shoes and a camisole to go under my jacket. I found a very sexy pair of gold sandals--now let's just hope I don't kill myself in the heels!

This 'n that

Wed I went back to the Library Supply Centre to get more detail about their Collection Development dept (go figure!) while Mollie and Carl went to the Media Authority. One of them will have to give you more detail on that. All I know is that it deals with media and the Internet.

Some general observations:
Teenagers are the same everywhere! One of the directors here kept calling them "monsters". :-)
Every place has its politics.

The National Library Board (NLB) is trying to discover ways to bring their digital content/ resources into the lives of their customers. They are really struggling with how to make libraries relevant to their customers. (Sound familiar?) They are constantly re-evaluating their processes and fine-tuning things. They are willing to try and fail so that they can ultimately succeed. They are committed to customer feedback. They are also very interested in being able to measure their success so that they can evaluate it. They offer research services (for a fee) to customers; they're very interested in packaging information for their customers.

The Singapore postal service is the library's delivery system and is so good that customers can get any book they've requested from another branch in 1-2 days. Books returned at other branches are sent back to the owning branch by the next day--AND postal staff shelve the books! They don't have anything resembling our Book Quick system; everything is done through reserving in the CARL system (charge of $1.55--Singapore dollars). I had a discussion with one of the other attendees, Diane Mayo of Information Partners, about our system and she posed a very good question. "Why do you charge for automatic holds which requires less staff time (& at a lower paid level) when book quick service requires more staff time (at higher paid level)?

National Library of Singapore

I'll devote a whole post to our Tue afternoon visit to the National Library. We started with lunch on the 16 floor, a kind of observation pod on the roof of the building. After lunch, as we were getting ready for our tour, a fire alarm went off. (Patrick Losinski, director of the Columbus Metro Library, took a flash picture in the bathroom, right in front of some kind of detector so he kept wondering if he set it off.) A very polite announcement came on the PA system asking everyone to remain calm and saying they were investigating the problem. Good thing they didn't ask us to evacuate because no one seemed particularly concerned, plus who wants to walk down 16 flights of stairs?

The National Lbrary has a circulating library on the first floor (focusing on business, the arts, & popular fiction), a 600+ seat drama centre, several exhibition areas and several floors of reference, including the rare materials collection and two closed floors of reference. Their rare collection has about 5,000 items, most of which have been digitized. The floors in the closed stacks (see picture) can only accomodate the weight of 6 people due to the weight of the books & shelves.

They have a HUGE computer room for their automation system (see picture with all the people in the hallway), and they have several gardens on various floors. The head of their facilities department said this is to help decrease the ambient temperature & keep down the dust around the building. This must be a common thing here because just about every high building has at least one outdoor garden and all along the roads there is landscaping as well (much more than in the US). It's really a beautiful place!

Catchin' up on Singapore

Now that we're settled in at our Hong Kong hotel (and Internet access is free!) I can catch you up on our last two days in Singapore. On Tue we visited the Library Supply Centre, which is their technical services department, and the National Library (central library).

The Library Supply Centre houses their technical services department and serves as a warehouse for their last copy (of a title) collection (about 500,000 items-see picture) and their floating collection. The floating collection is a sort of "just in case" collection of popular titles. When the branches need more copies of Harry Potter or some other popular title, they can request more copies from this collection. Their tech services dept processes about 4,000 items per day and about 1.5 items per year. Items are moved on a conveyor belt system from one station to the next in the processing cycle. Items are given a barcode & put in a barcoded bin (see picture). They have a process management system that can track the bins & any item so they know where it is in the process cycle.

The library buys about 65,000 titles a year: 75% in English, 15% Chinese, 5% Malay, & 5% Tamil (matches breakdown of their demographics). They can have over a thousand holds on blockbuster titles such as Harry Potter. They weed about 250,000-300,000 titles per year. Last copies and donated items are never withdrawn; they are sent to the depository collection in this building. They receive about 10,000 gift items per year, but they only accept gifts from other libraries, organizations, and prominent citizens. Branches do not accept gifts. One must write a letter to the director of the National Library Board to get permission to donate material.

When items are weeded from branch collections, everything is sent to this warehouse. Books that don't need to go into the last copy collection are stored in another storage facility to wait for their annual book sale which is held in the Singapore exhibition hall--think Smith College book sale to the tenth power.

On to Hong Kong

It's late here, after midnight Tue so I won't take time to talk about today's visits (especially since Internet access here at the hotel costs 85 cents per minute). Tomorrow I'm going back to the tech services department again while Mollie and Carl go to the Media Authority. Then we have a farewell luncheon and head to the airport for our flight to Hong Kong. Wed evening or Thu morning I should have time to post pictures and commentary of our last two days in Singapore.

Craving American Food!

Both Carl & I couldn't stand the thought of another noodle or Asian sauce with mysterious things in it Monday night so we went to the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner. (Poor Mollie seems to have developed a nasty chest cold so she just went to bed after our visits. We told her not to eat the octopus!) Carl & I had loaded nachos and potato skins (heaven!) and I had a salad.

Everywhere we go, there seems to be a bakery shop selling gorgeous cakes, especially cheesecakes--all kinds. Despite the plethora of goodies, neither Carl or I have had any. Our stomaches have been so traumatized by some of the food that we've tried that we haven't even been tempted yet.

There's a very strong national focus here on everyone's social responsibility to the entire community, including businesses. There are all kinds of campaigns to improve yourself and your community and the library supports these national initiatives, in many cases using contests. One contest was for a stop violence poster. Another contest is for the most interesting question posed to library staff and the grand prize winners get iPods donated by local business--there's a lot of corporate support of the library.

It's a little odd being the only one in the group without manager or director in my title, but everyone's been very nice. Our group is smaller than planned. The four people from Brooklyn Public weren't able to come, and Charles Brown got sick at the last moment. Mollie and Carl keep teasing me that we should rename the blog "Rose's Great Out-of-the-Box Adventure" or something like that and that I should sign myself as the "Singapore Blogger."

Mollie got to sit next to Dr. Beh of the National Library Board at the banquet Sunday evening. He had been to Baltimore in the '90s when their group visited and had many fond memories of his visit.

Carl & I both hired tailors to make some clothes for us. He picked up his four shirts last night; I'm supposed to pick up my suit & skirt tonight. We both get a kick out of talking about "my" tailor. Daalings, I went to my tailor last night for my final fitting (this said lounging in my hotel robe).

Today we're going to visit the National Library, especially their tech services department. The have centralized collection development although they are considering changing that model to one that allows branches more choice in the process. I'll give you details tonight.

Monday's library visits

Today we visited 4 different libraries. First we visited the Woodlands Regional Community Library which is 6 floors housed in the community's civic center. It has 12 self-checkout stations (stop crying Circ staff!) and their door count is about 5,000 per day during the week and 10,000 per day on weekends. Yes, per day!

We learned that all their libraries have collections in at least the four official languages; the state ID card can also serve as the customer's library card; the state cash card can be used to pay for library fees; they charge 3 cents a minute for internet access and don't allow internet use for games; their nonfiction collections are shelved in Dewey order but they have separated out 10 major nonfiction categories (e.g., computers, health, travel, etc.) that have special icons on spines so that there are actually two nonfiction sections--the 10 major groups are shelved in a section and then the rest of the nonfiction is lumped in a general nonfiction section. They also color code all children's material with a yellow stripe on the spine, young people's material with an orange stripe, and adult material with a blue stripe. They then use these colors on all signage for those collections.

Singapore also has centralised telephone reference. Every phone and e-mail inquiry is handled first by the lowest level staff. If the question requires a reference librarian's skill, the call is bumped up. They find that 80% of the questions can be answered by the lower level staff.

We also visited a children's community library on the ground floor of a housing complex. We had to take our shoes off when we went into it. It primarily contained material for preschoolers because that is the population within the housing units. It is open from 4-9pm. The books cannot be returned to any other branch which is not the case for most other branches.

Next we visited the do-it-yourself library (Sengkang Community Library) in one of their many malls. Their malls all seem to be at least 4 floors--they go up instead of spreading out. The library has no customer service counter here, but they do have a "Concierge" counter staffed by security guards. They also have paraprofessionals who rove in the stacks and a "Cybrarian" kiosk where they can pick up a phone and be connected with a staff member. The staff on the other end of the phone can push screens of the catalog or map of a library onto the screen of the Cybrarian kiosk for the customer to see. The circulation here is about 120,000 per month! They don't have chairs here, but do have several backless benches and some "bum rests" which are metal rails around a circular pole used for signage.

Lastly, we visited the library geared toward 18-35 year olds in an upscale mall. It has a lot of clear acrylic and glass so as to "easily see and be seen" in the words of one of its librarians. It only has adult/young adult material and is set up to resemble a shop or boutique. No comfortable seating, just benches; several listening stations and internet stations. Their circ is about 80,000 per month and their door count is about 120,000 per month; open 11-9 seven days a week. There are a lot of people over here and they seem to throng to their libraries as well as the book stores. Every book store has been packed.

All but the children's library had cafes in them.

The Welcome Banquet

We were officially welcomed to Singapore by Beh chew Leng and Dr. Pasad of the National Library Board of Singapore and by Trish Culkin of TLC (aka CARL). The NLB staff made some interesting comments: they are not afraid to use the library as a laboratory; don't be afraid to look at other industries for a solution to your problems; using RFID for simple checkouts and returns is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of potential--In a few years, you may not need Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress classification because RFID will tell you where on the shelf in the branch a particular item can be found even if it's misshelved.

Here was the menu for the banquet (and I have a paper copy to prove it!) in eight courses:
Vietnamese style spring rolls, roast duck, barbecue pork, petite octopus
braised shark's fin broth with crabmeat
deep fried seaweed roll in Thai style, sauteed shrimp in spicy x. o. sauce
steamed "live" marble goby in noble Tanfu style
crispy skin roast chicken served in mango compote
braised sea cucumber with Shiitake mushrooms in superior oyster sauce
braised thin noodles with preserved vegetables
cream of red bean with glutinous rice dumpling

I tried everything but the octopus and the sea cucumber, but Mollie had TWO pieces of octopus! I don't know what Carl did or did not try because each of us sat at a different table. Here's a picture of my marble goby.

Our hotel

Here are some views of the hotel.


The hotel is wonderful, especially since Mollie and I paid the extra $5 for an executive room. This means that we got welcome chocolates, complimentary bottles of water, slippers, robes, free breakfast, and someone comes in to turn down our sheets each night and give us a fancy paper with a note of wisdom on it. We feel very cosmopolitan lounging in our robes on our duvet bed covers. :-)

Rose

Happy Birthday Mollie

Here's Mollie having her Singapore Sling at the famous Raffles Hotel's Long Bar. And it is too ethnic 'cause we had lamb satay and black pepper bacon rolls with our drinks--so there! :-p

For those of you wondering how long it took us in your time, we started our journey at BWI at about 7am Thu Feb 16 and were checked into our hotel here by about 2:30pm Fri Feb 17. You do the math!

And Essex--Mollie says you better be checking this blog too and posting comments--"don't be wimps!"
Rose

We've arrived!

We finally arrived at the Singapore Hilton at around 3-4am Sat Feb 18 after several flight delays due to thunderstorms in Chicago. Our first official activity is a welcome dinner Sunday evening so we have a little time to sightsee. Tonight we're going to celebrate Mollie's birthday at Raffles.

I can't wait!

Just two more weeks and we'll be in Singapore!

Check out Brooklyn Public Library's blog http://bplaway.blogspot.com/ and the Urban Libraries Council website for the trip http://www.urbanlibraries.org/singaporehongkongparticipantinformation.html .
Rose