Under the new process, NUS will reach out “more extensively” to faculty and other academic libraries. - Photo: Lianhe Zaobao
SINGAPORE: About 8,500 duplicate books from the Yale-NUS library will be given to book fairs, instead of being disposed of, following an outcry from some alumni. Some 500 of the 9,000 books originally slated for recycling were taken away.
Speaking to the media on Wednesday (May 21), NUS university librarian Natalie Pang said that 9,000 out of the total number of 45,000 books in the college’s library were duplicates or had “low utilisation rate”.
The plan was to recycle these 9,000 books, as per the standard operating processes for NUS libraries when excess titles cannot be rehomed or given away.
The process for the remaining 8,500 books has since been halted after photos and videos of employees from a recycling company loading books onto a truck circulated online on May 20, drawing sharp criticism from alumni and members of the public who called the disposal wasteful and distressing.
NUS provost Aaron Thean told the media: “NUS houses about four million volumes of books... this is a big collection. So any loss of books to us is always heartbreaking.
“All these books mean a lot to us,” he added, adding that the university will find new owners for the books at upcoming book fairs.
Associate Professor Pang said two book fairs will be held in May and June. These will be open to all NUS students and alumni as well as the public.
The first book fair will be held from May 28 to June 9 at the Yale-NUS library, from 5pm to 8pm.
The second will be held on June 14 at NUS Central Library from 10am to 4pm.
She confirmed that the 500 books taken from Yale-NUS College on May 20 have since been disposed of.
Going forward, the university will introduce a new process for excess books, she said.
It currently first offers excess books to faculty members, rehomes them across its libraries or offers them to other academic institutions. Recycling is always a “last resort”, she said. NUS now has seven libraries.
Under the new process, NUS will reach out “more extensively” to faculty and other academic libraries, and will hold book adoption fairs for its students and alumni, as well as the public.
If the books are still not able to be rehomed, the university will work with second-hand bookshops like Thryft, a thrift store based in Singapore for pre-loved books and other items.
“What I’m trying to do with this new standard operating procedure is to extend the shelf life of these books,” Prof Pang said.
“We did not realise there was interest from students, and we did not actually make enough arrangements to actually allow students to have the opportunity to own those books,” she added, apologising for not extensively reaching out to faculty.
“I think there’s no two ways about it,” she said. “We have to own it, and we will do better.”
ST has contacted NLB and other academic institutions to ask how they rehome excess books.
In an earlier statement on May 21, NUS had apologised for not offering the excess library books to students before they were sent for disposal, calling it an “operational lapse”.
Prof Pang said the university had tried to contact the recycling company, Green Orange Enviro, at around 2pm on May 20 to request that the truck return the books, after learning of students’ interest.
However, the company declined, even after the university offered payment and manpower to help sort the books.
Yale-NUS College’s last cohort graduated on May 14.
The liberal arts institution, founded in 2011 through a partnership between Yale University and NUS, is being closed following an announcement in 2021 of its merger with NUS’ University Scholars Programme.
With the closure of Yale-NUS College, preparations to rehome its library books had been under way for about two years, Prof Pang said, adding that while the university routinely manages its library collection, the scale of this exercise was “significantly larger” than usual.
She also clarified that the books were not donated because the library was unaware of students’ interest, not because of any issue involving the books’ RFID tags – as claimed by some library staff at the scene on May 20, according to students’ accounts.
“In the past, in our experience organising these book giveaways – whether it’s for students or members of the NUS community, be it staff or faculty – there’s been quite a low demand for many of these titles that we put out,” Prof Pang said.
“But, this incident has also shown us that there are lessons to learn from this,” she added.
Some alumni told The Straits Times that the disposal of Yale-NUS library books was careless and avoidable, and said it should not have taken public outcry to prompt action.
“This was a preventable, bureaucratic failure that revealed how little student voices and institutional memory were valued,” said Simran Kaur, 22.
She said a library built with care should not be dismantled “without transparency, imagination, or care”, and books treated not as knowledge or history, but as clutter.
She added that the book fairs felt like “a box to be ticked in response to backlash, not a reflection of any real accountability”, though she also welcomed NUS Libraries’ review of its processes.
Lee Jiaying, 21, a Yale-NUS alumna who witnessed the disposal first-hand, said NUS’s claim that it did not realise students wanted the books “missed the point entirely”.
“This isn’t just about whether students wanted them,” she said. “The real issue is that discarding books so carelessly and destructively reflects a troubling disregard for public resources and intellectual value.”
Many of the discarded titles she saw were popular and widely read, she said, calling it a missed opportunity to redirect them to communities in need. She also questioned the university’s claim that the books’ RFID tags posed no security risk, pointing out that staff had stopped students from taking even a few home.
Another alumna, Jolene Lum, 28, from the class of 2019, said the incident added to longstanding disappointment among alumni over how NUS has handled the closure of Yale-NUS, though many took pride in how the community came together in the college’s final days.
“At first, I wondered if this was an intentional erasure of Yale-NUS’s legacy – the metaphors write themselves,” she said. “But even without malice, the careless disposal of books felt like a waste and showed a lack of thought.” - The Straits Times/ANN
