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New Punggol library opens with special features for children, people with disabilities
SINGAPORE: The Punggol Regional Library opened its first two floors to the public on Monday (Jan 30), featuring spaces for children such as a do-it-yourself tinkering area and a room with animated local poetry.
The new library, located within the One Punggol integrated community hub, will also cater to people with disabilities through features like calm pods and wheelchair-accessible book borrowing stations.
The remaining three floors — aimed at teenagers and adults — are expected to open a few months later, said the National Library Board (NLB) in a press release.
The library, which is also the largest public library in Singapore, will open daily from 12pm to 9pm.
FEATURES FOR CHILDREN
Spark!Lab: A tinkering space that NLB set up in partnership with the Smithsonian Institution from the United States.
Among the activities that children can enjoy is creating items that fly through a wind tunnel. They are free to go at their own pace, guided by questions for each activity. This is targeted at children aged seven to 12 years.
Storyteller Cove: Children can learn more about the history, culture and customs of different countries through interactive experiences on physical and digital platforms.
These include decorated physical structures and animations, do-it-yourself activity kits, guided story crafting, prop-making, and illustrations from children’s picture books on digital displays.
Stories Come Alive: A room with moving images and text, as well as light and sound effects, for children aged four to 10 years to experience storytelling in an immersive and interactive manner.
All patrons can also check out Words That Move — an animated showcase of poems by Singaporean writers — here. Members of the public can interact with poems, such as Punggol by Ronald JJ Wong, in the four official languages.
Toy Library: NLB's first dedicated toy library comes stocked with toys, educational aids, puppets and costumes to cater to different types of play — creative, dramatic or sensory.
It is maintained by students from the MINDS (Movement for the Intellectually Disabled of Singapore) Fernvale Gardens School.
TinkerTots: A space for children aged six and below to learn about the world through educational toys and do-it-yourself tinkering activities under parental supervision.
[Note: Our toy ultraviolet sterilisers are installed at Punggol Regional Library's
Toy Library / TinkerTots corner for parents to self-sanitise toys, costumes, study materials, puppets, educational aids, etc. Giving them an extra peace of mind while the children have fun tinkering away]
FEATURES FOR THOSE WITH DISABILITIES
Accessible Collection: A selection of 3,000 English books for children and adults with disabilities, their caregivers and communities. These include Braille books with text for those with visual impairments.
Calm Pods: A waiting area with sensory aids and a beanbag, and a more private space with padded walls and flooring.
Borrow-N-Go, wheelchair-accessible book borrowing stations: A dedicated passageway for wheelchair users to borrow books. The borrowing stations come with wheelchair-accessible tables, along with increased font size and colour contrast on the interface for wheelchair users and persons with partial vision loss, including seniors.
Assistive technology: Catalogue stations are equipped with assistive technology devices such as joy sticks, trackballs, large key keyboards and high contrast keyboards.
NLB said that these features are part of its ongoing efforts to make its libraries and archives accessible to everyone. The features were developed with input from the community and will be fine-tuned over time with further feedback.
Members of the public who have Accessible Membership will also get privileges on top of the basic library membership ones, such as the doubling of loan and renewal periods from three weeks to six weeks.
Individuals must be existing library members and a beneficiary of an eligible disability scheme or service funded by the Ministry of Social and Family Development, or who had attended or is currently attending a Government-funded Special Education school.
[Source: Channel NewsAsia - New Punggol library opens with special features for children, people with disabilities]