Making A Mark In History- Citizen Archivist Project

Making A Mark In History: Citizen Archivist Project

Through the Citizen Archivist Project, anyone can discover and write about events in Singapore’s past.

Left: A man smoking using a wooden pipe. There is a kettle on a charcoal stove, and a kerosene lamp on top of a cabinet to the right of the man. (contributed by Yit Chin Chuan) Ministry of Culture Right: Docked ships (open for information) Ministry of Information and the Arts Collection

Before the Formula One night races, there was the Singapore Grand Prix in 1966. Mr Peter Pak wasn’t yet born then, nor is he a car expert. But that did not stop him from volunteering to give captions for photos of the race on the Citizen Archivist Project online portal, run by the National Archives of Singapore (NAS).

Left: Workers collecting their wages and donating to the Singapore Anti-Tuberculosis Association in 1956. Tuberculosis was a prevalent health threat in Singapore in the 1940s and 1950s. (contributed by Yit Chin Chuan) Ministry of Information and the Arts Collection Right: A shirtless Indian boy balancing himself inside a circular concrete-lined well, with a stone-filled crevice (serving as hand grip), and filled with water at the bottom. (contributed by Pat SG) Ministry of Information and the Arts Collection

The heritage enthusiast had found a newspaper article listing the race categories, drivers’ names and vehicles. “With that and by cross-referencing pictures of similar car makes and models, I was able to provide a few descriptions,” he says.

D.J. Morton in a Sunbeam 16 (no. 25) participating in the vintage car race category for the Tay Koh Yat Bus Co. Trophy of the Singapore Grand Prix Race, 1966. (contributed by Peter Pak) Ministry of Information and the Arts Collection

Mr Pak, 43, is a senior project manager at the National Library Board. He takes care of its microsites, including Infopedia, an online encyclopaedia about Singapore, which comes in handy whenever he needs to look up details and check facts. He has contributed captions for more than 200 photos on the portal.

Left: A long wooden walkway built on stilts over a river or canal. A pipe runs along the length of the walkway. The foreground shows children: one playing with chicks or ducklings, another with a fishing net. (contributed by Lee Bee Lor) Ministry of Culture Collection Right: Nurses and patients in a children’s ward. (contributed by Lee Bee Lor) Ministry of Information and the Arts Collection

“I take pride in seeing what I have personally transcribed and described accepted by the professionals at the NAS,” he says.

Besides describing historical images, volunteers can also transcribe manuscripts and audio recordings on the portal. The aim is to make these artefacts, often passed to the NAS with little information, searchable for researchers and anyone interested in Singapore’s past.

Left: The Commencement Ceremony of MRT Passenger Service between Jurong East and Choa Chua Kang on March 10, 1990. The train is approaching Bukit Gombak Station. (contributed by Chionh Choon Lee) Ministry of Information and the Arts Collection Right: Heavily silted pond or river with large amounts of rubbish on the bank. Note the attap hut perched on the bank. (contributed by Chee Hoh Kwok) Ministry of Culture Collection

This crowdsourcing initiative has created a community of engaged volunteers, says Assistant Archivist Abigail Huang. With their dedicated help, the NAS has been able to steadily complete what would have been near impossible for staff to do alone. This has also freed up time for staff to focus on better serving people with challenging research needs.

I take pride in seeing what I have personally transcribed and described accepted by the professionals at the NAS.

As of March 2016, volunteers have contributed captions to more than 1,700 photos and transcribed more than 13,000 documents. Most of the manuscripts are Straits Settlement Records, a collection of colonial government documents dating back to the 1800s. The NAS hopes to have as many as possible of these records transcribed by 2019, in time for the 200th anniversary of Raffles’ landing in Singapore.

Left: Four children in bamboo seats (open for information) Ministry of Information and the Arts Collection Right:The People’s Association Retirees Club dance at their 9th Anniversary High Tea on August 29, 1992, at NTUC Club. (contributed by Damien Wang) People’s Association Collection

And that is why the Project team is calling for more volunteers. Public officers, in particular, could be familiar with topics related to the colonial government, says Ms Huang. While times have changed, the manuscripts show that public officials, then as now, had to deal with communicating policies effectively, addressing public feedback and even putting up business cases for their proposals.

For 16-year-old volunteer Wee Li Shyen, the chance to see the centuries-old letters of Sir Stamford Raffles, William Farquhar and John Crawford got her excited to get involved: “Learning what life was like in the early days … spurred me on.”

“Request for pension after working very hard for the government”, a letter by Prince of Wales Island governor S G Bonham on behalf of Mahomed Lebby Courtesy of the National Archives of Singapore

The manuscripts’ cursive script and content, written in “a very different English from what we use today”, took her a while to decipher, but it became easier over time.

“Letters that proved interesting touched on Raffles’ unhappiness with Farquhar, how Raffles reprimanded and later fired him as Resident. It was rather amusing that the language used was very polite, but the intent was not,” says the teenager.