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the public. The secret sauce to how we did this so quickly was that we pre-visualised every step of the way and then keep iterat- ing relentlessly. Both prototypes came out in a matter of months and with feedback, we went back, further developed them and rolled them out again. “Both have been massively popular reaching more than 200,000 in a short time. To accompany these, we had a mas- sive public education campaign on Gen AI, digital literacy and deepfakes through our S.U.R.E. (Source, Understand, Research, Evaluate) initiative that reached 2.5 million. I guess that is what a library does – even as we delight, we educate and inform. It’s in our blood.”


And Gene reveals that innovation at NLB is part of a wider strategy, LAB 25 – Libraries and Archives Blueprint 2025, that he is leading in his Chief Innovation Officer role. This is setting a direction for NLB that is helping to empower staff to deliver transformative change. He says: “NLB and our library system are known nationally to be innovative and dy- namic – there really is a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get there and keep going. I have no illusions about this all being a fairytale. We have doubts all the time and I certainly live constantly with uncertainty! “But what we have also learned – and


this is a key aspect of LAB25, hence the acronym – is that the only way to address the doubts and uncertainty is to take action, to experiment, and to learn what (not) to do next.


“I like that personally too as I cannot stand inertia or fear that keeps festering. So, when teams and staff have ideas, we say – work on them! But do so in a way that is fail fast and fail small. Only when we have done sufficient prototypes will we scale up sys- tem-wide. Though I have to say that we still do not stop tinkering even then!” And while there is experimentation in the development process, Gene says it is also important to consider the wider impact of projects on the organisation, its users and stakeholders – as well as being aware of what lessons can be learnt on the way. “I’ve always felt that in any tech project that it is vital that we step outside the room to know what people outside think about it. Honestly, it is something we should do for any project. For Gen AI, it is even more critical as it can be so conten- tious. So that is something I always say to my tech partners when we are collabo- rating.


“Besides being extremely careful with our prototypes by ensuring that any content that we use is never ingested by or used to train an external LLM, we also


had to ensure everything is done in a protected environment only accessible by NLB.


“On top of that, we limited the creativity of the LLM we use to query our dataset to ensure hallucination is down to its minimum. Further, we also make sure we always have sources and public education links so that our patrons can also have a learning and discovery moment after enjoying our Gen AI-enabled services. “Ultimately, it is also about sharing this with our stakeholders including the creative community. Listening empathet- ically and understanding their anxieties while also making sure we always work with them is a huge lesson I have learned. Recently I went beyond more intimate settings to meeting with larger groups as I realised there were gaps in understanding what we were doing. Happy to say that that worked!”


Gene Tan will be a keynote speaker at this year’s CILIP Conference, where you can find out more about how the National Library Board of Singapore is embracing innovation to deliver better and more accessible services now and into the future.


Book your place at CILIP Conference 2025 now at www.cilipconference.org.uk IP


Summer 2025


INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL 19


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