Director's Note (April 2026)

It’s the year of the horse, according to the Chinese calendar, and I’m happy to report that as we gallop into the new year, BiblioAsia has plenty of new and interesting stories for you to graze on.

Our cover story looks at the milk drinking campaign that ran in the 1970s and 80s. Some readers might remember the daily ritual of drinking a small carton of milk in class (or forking out extra money for your children to buy the milk). The history of the programme, why it started and how it soured, is a microcosm of the Singapore story.

Speaking of the Singapore story, there is a new exhibition at Level 10 of the National Library Building that looks at one of the defining moments of Singapore’s history – separation from Malaysia in 1965. For the longest time, conventional wisdom here held that Singapore had been kicked out. However, the exhibition (and accompanying book) makes clear that it was a mutual decision. In this issue, we reproduce an extract from The Albatross File: Inside Separation that explains why Finance Minister Goh Keng Swee felt that Singapore would be better off without Malaysia, together with a transcript of his handwritten notes from a key July 1965 meeting that worked out how the separation would be handled. 

The separation in August 1965 was a watershed event that would change Singapore in ways both large and small. One of those small ways was turning 13 pens filled with chickens, turkeys and cattle (but no horses) into an agricultural show in the heart of the city. Largely forgotten today, the Singapore Agricultural Show in September that year was an attempt to put a brave foot (or hoof) forward, to show that life would go on and that Singapore would thrive.

Hold your horses though, we have much more for you: we examine a rare Japanese map of Singapore from the 1920s; we look at the 13-year history of the University of Malaya in Singapore; and we learn about how historians are finding new sources of Singapore’s history, especially for the period before the 19th century.

Is history just about events, artefacts and institutions? Neigh, we say. History is about people as well. In this issue, you can read about Rodolfo Nolli, an Italian sculptor who left his mark everywhere around Singapore; the legendary singer-actor-director P. Ramlee’s fruitful (screen)time in the city; civil servant Lee Ek Tieng who oversaw the clean-up of the Singapore River; and Yoshiya Mita, a Japanese military judge whose friendship with Lee Kip Lee and his family during the Japanese Occupation eventually resulted in singer-songwriter Dick Lee’s play, A Rising Son.

Saddle up and enjoy the ride!

Alicia Yeo
Director
National Library Singapore