Themed 'Global Knowledge Renaissance', the event saw leaders of the industry, academia, government and business from 19 countries coming to Suntec Singapore to hear 60 speakers expound on knowledge governance and people connectivity as key foundations for new knowledge societies as well as the convergence of the traditional strengths of libraries and archives with modern-day implementations of knowledge tools and applications in the IT arena. 

Organised by the National Library Board of Singapore (NLB) and the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts (MITA), WLS was supported by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) and the National Heritage Board of Singapore (NHB), together with 20 other public and private institutions. 

"The World Library Summit promotes international exchange of experiences and ideas in the library and information world," said Dr Tan Chin Nam, Chairman, NLB. 

In the opening speech marking the start of the summit, Mr David Lim, Acting Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts said that the conference underscores the importance of knowledge in the global economy. 

"The presence of so many experts and leaders of the library and archive services affirms the timeliness of the conference and the interest in exploring the theme," he added. 

Dr. Douglas Carl Engelbart

One of the major highlights of the seminar was the first keynote address by Dr Douglas Carl Engelbart, the director of Bootstrap Institute and Bootstrap Alliance. Dr Engelbart is better known as the American inventor who pioneered many of the basic concepts of computers that we take for granted today, including the mouse, interactive computing, hypermedia, multiple windows, teleconferencing, and the graphical user interface. 

Touching on knowledge augmentation for the 21st Century, he outlined how the rate of technology innovation "has augmented basic human abilities, opened possibilities but which has also threatened to tear our social fabric." 

Dr. Engelbart then examined the new developments that strain the ability of governments, libraries and other social institutions to bridge the digital divide and proposed a role for world library organisations as leaders in knowledge augmentation for the 21st century. 
 

 A second highlight of the WLS was the speech by Dr Charles F. Goldfarb, commonly called the 'father of markup languages'. Dr. Goldfarb invented the SGML language in 1974 and later led the team that developed it into the international standard on which both HTML and XML are based, thus paving the way for the creation of the Internet. 

Dr. Goldfarb expounded on the relationship between markup languages and knowledge retention. "We computerise the capture of documents in rendered form, using a word processor that promises that what you see on the computer screen is exactly what you'll get on the printed page and we can automate card catalogues, but still can do little to interconnect the objects they describe. Even the World Wide Web's hyperlinking is of limited utility because it, too, is based on rendered objects - web pages - rather than on the ideas they contain," he said in his speech. 

Ms Lynne Brindley, chief executive of The British Library commented that it was appropriate to have the summit in Singapore. "Singapore is admired from afar as a knowledge society, where the library plays a critical role," she said during her presentation touching on key challenges that will position the library of the 21st century. 

Delegates from around the world took advantage of the three-day conference to network and learn from the wide variety of speakers. Dr Babu Rao Gonipati, Assistant Librarian with India's Andhra University Library was all praises for NLB for holding the summit. 

"My library has 450,000 books and has been opened since 1926, but is a very much a traditional one and we hardly have any modern gadgets. I learnt a lot about the modernisation of library �Ethe utilisation of emails, websites and databases," he said. 

Dr. Gonipati plans to make full use of the connections and ideas that he picked up during his stay. "When I get back I will draw up plans to implement latest developments, and recommend the various IT solutions to bring my library into the digital age," he elaborated.