Checkpoint 4 - Wu Ting Fang Library
Located on the fifth floor of the East Wing, Wu Ting Fang Library serves as a self-study and reference hub for the College’s students. With over 22,400 books in its collection, along with over 1,800 audio-visual items, the library is by no means small in scale. It is also fitted with numerous computers and tablets.
The College library traces its roots back to the 1840s, and once housed the Torah of the Kaifeng Jews which is now in the British Library. The current library on the Bonham Road campus came into being in 1955 when the College’s Sixth Form students needed reference books and extra-curricular reading materials. It began as a small, makeshift library, located in a vacated classroom. From the 1960s, the budget for library materials gradually increased. This strained the capacity of the makeshift classroom library, and so the library was relocated in 1963. It was also in that year when the library adopted the Dewey Decimal Classification system in order to better categorise and organise the rapidly growing collection. In 1964, the College library was officially founded. There was also a ‘staff library’ in what is now the conference room on the 4th floor, but the College decided to combine the two libraries into one to let students gain access to more information and also to expand the scope of the library’s collection.
From 1965 to 1969, the library was located on the seventh floor of the Stewart Building. With a fixed location, the library expanded its collection and bought books for the junior students as well, including English storybooks and reference books. The College also began to have regular subscriptions to newspapers and magazines. After the completion of the East Wing in 1969, the library moved once again to its current location - the fifth floor of the East Wing.
Apart from buying books, the College library also receives donations of books. The United States Information Agency, in particular, donated a number of books to the College in the early days, and the British Council also regularly notified the College to collect back issues of periodicals. Additionally, the College subscribes to a plethora of educational magazines, including Popular Science, Time, and National Geographic, among others. The College also subscribes to Hong Kong’s major newspapers daily.
The 1960s marked changes in both the scale and location of the library. The 1970s, meanwhile, marked a change in the library’s equipment. In addition to having more bookshelves to hold the growing collection, the library also added a photocopier, a laminating machine, an electric heater, a locker rental service, and stools that allowed students to reach the top of bookshelves. The College library was officially renamed ‘Wu Ting Fang Library’ in September 1974, in honour of the prominent Chinese diplomat and alumnus Dr Wu Ting Fang (aka Ng Choy). The library also merged with the library of the Primary Section of the College, which was on the sixth floor of the Primary School Block in 1975. In 1978, the library underwent further expansion and occupied the entire fifth floor; before that, the fifth floor was shared by the library and the Geography Room, which explains the two unused doors of the library today. Double-glazed windows and air-conditioning were installed in 1981. Apart from being a place for books, the library also serves as a self-study hub. Between the 1970s and the 1990s, the library housed the College’s study carrels, with individual lamps and separated by wooden partitions, for students’ self-study.
But books are not all that Wu Ting Fang Library has to offer. Throughout the latter half of the 20th century, technology evolved at an astonishing pace. This evolution of technology has been something that St. Paul’s College has striven to keep up with over the years. Computers were first introduced into the library in 1984, and Internet access for the computers was added in 1999; magnetic security gates were introduced in the same year. The entire library catalogue was computerised in 2000, allowing for easier access to reading materials by the students. The library continues to upgrade and add additional computers from time to time. Since 2007, the library has been equipped with an RFID library management system.
Ever since the College started enrolling the visually impaired in 1970, specialist equipment has been brought into the library as well. There is a special corner within the library designated for our visually impaired students, where their Braille textbooks can be kept. The library used to have a Braille typewriter, though that has been replaced by a desktop computer. Equipment for our visually impaired students is now complete with a Braille printer, a Braille note-taker, a talking calculator, and a raised-line drawing board.
Nowadays, having a library is a must for all secondary schools. St. Paul’s College is no exception. Though its appearance and services provided may have changed a lot over the years, its aim remains the same - to provide the best environment and the best resources possible for the students.