51³Ô¹Ï

It is understandable that the very thought of a library removing books from its collections seems antithetical to its raison d¡¯¨ºtre. Hence, there is a sense in which I understand my colleague Andrew Hui¡¯s dismay at a recent operational lapse that led to a portion of the Yale-NUS College Library¡¯s collection being sent for recycling. However, while the incident was unfortunate, it is far from the ¡°crime against culture¡± that Hui depicted it as in his recent article for 51³Ô¹Ï.

All libraries regularly review and remove titles, a practice known as ¡°¡±. It is no mere administrative spring cleaning: it is fundamental to the library¡¯s purpose. In the case of a university library, it ensures that collections actively support the parent institution¡¯s educational mission.

Hence, while 36,000 out of Yale-NUS¡¯ 45,000 titles have been rehomed in other National University of Singapore libraries following the college¡¯s closure this year, the remaining 9,000 were identified as duplicate titles expected to see low utilisation so were earmarked for weeding. Unfortunately, about 500 items were sent for recycling without sufficient outreach to faculty and students.

This is not how NUS Libraries normally function. We usually give away weeded titles (at least 5,000 over the last 15 years); recycling is only considered as a last resort. But when the mistake was discovered, we halted the recycling, and most of the remaining titles were subsequently given away through a book fair.

Hui makes a fair point about the need for university libraries to maintain comprehensive and meaningful collections that benefit their academic communities. But that is precisely what weeding facilitates, allowing collections and spaces to evolve with academia, helping disciplines old and new to grow. Hui is quite wrong to liken this process to the discarding of last season¡¯s fast fashions.

NUS Libraries currently steward more than four million titles, built up over 120 years, including private papers and rare books and manuscripts dating back centuries. If the calculus involved in building this collection came down to a pithy cost-benefit analysis of shelf space and climate control, performed by a committee of bean counters, as Hui claims, our collections would have long since become obsolete, incapable of supporting the teaching and research of a university that serves upwards of?.

Nevertheless, I acknowledge our mistake in the Yale-NUS case ¨C to avoid a repeat of which, we have implemented additional checks in our weeding procedure to ensure we offer titles to faculty and students, as well as to academic libraries in Singapore and beyond.

This is particularly important in an age when there is abundant information but unevenly distributed resources to access it ¨C yes, in the form of physical books but, increasingly, in digital formats, too.

If we care about cultural memory ¨C who we are, where we come from, and what futures we might imagine ¨C then access to such knowledge is vital. But behind every order for a book, journal subscription or database login lie a set of negotiations shaped by institutional and global inequities, fronted by librarians. University libraries in more well-resourced institutions can afford blanket ¡°transformative agreements¡± with publishers, while independent scholars, community researchers and those in poorer institutions or countries are locked out.

Libraries, especially university libraries, have long understood that preservation and access must go hand in hand. But proprietary formats, licensing restrictions and server sustainability threaten the longevity of digital scholarly work. If we do not enhance repositories, uphold and adapt metadata standards and advocate for open formats, what is digitally born today will be culturally forgotten tomorrow.

Additionally, librarians must be conscious that the prioritisation of English-language publications marginalises other ways of knowing. This is especially crucial in South-east Asia, a region characterised by multilingual resources, oral traditions, indigenous knowledge and community archives. For true cultural memory, librarians must actively seek and preserve endangered knowledge, codified in rare and ancient texts and artefacts.

In my own advocacy around these issues, it has become clear that there is a growing divide, with less well-resourced university libraries simply unable to keep up?because they?lack funding, empowerment or institutional will. Yet better-resourced libraries¡¯ weeding processes could help lessen the divide.

Book giveaways to students and faculty are much better than recycling but they also privilege those who already have the means and access. Librarians need to work with each other and other stakeholders to redirect weeded materials to underserved libraries and academic partners ¨C reinforcing our collective responsibility to safeguard knowledge for all.

I don¡¯t have all the answers but I certainly do not take my role as NUS university librarian lightly. We¡¯ve checked our privilege and made our own forays into addressing these access issues. We have built our own . We have helped level up early career librarians from underserved regions through an that comes with funded fellowships. We have kickstarted a that builds on our collections. And we have worked with regional partners to .

These ongoing efforts are much less visibly dramatic than an accidental book disposal but far more consequential in shaping what knowledge is preserved, shared and remembered.

Weeding books cannot be fairly compared to the burning of the Great Library of Alexandria ¨C but indifference to access can. Ignorance will destroy not just libraries but civilised society as we know it. Librarians must reclaim our role not as custodians of scarcity but as architects of a more open and inclusive knowledge future.

is university librarian and associate professor and head of the department of communications and new media at the National University of Singapore.