She is a manager in the archives team at Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay.

To describe it simply, an archivist preserves important memories for future reference. When Wei Lian archives something, it can involve choosing what to preserve, organising what is preserved, and making what is preserved easily accessible.

This is where people drop off items such as hard disk drives and CDs of video recordings, photos and posters for Wei Lian to archive. After Wei Lian collects it, it’s her job to make sure they are organised and stored neatly and safely.

This is a special storage system that filters the air within to keep it clean and free from dust. It even uses ultraviolet light to help prevent growth of unwanted microorganisms that might affect the items inside! 

What’s inside? Various kinds of media storage, and many of them are from before digital media became commonplace!

It used to be that Wei Lian had to physically label the tape with details such as the event name, date and time before she keeps it in the physical archive. Each tape also has its own serial number. Why? Because sometimes there is more than one copy of the same tape (just like when you find many copies of the same book at the library) and that can get confusing. Each tape having their own serial number tells us that they are unique items.

But video tapes are very rare these days because practically all video recording is done digitally. Now, Wei Lian just has to make sure everything is preserved properly in the physical archive.

So how does Wei Lian archive a video recording these days? Read on!

There’s no need for a physical storage space anymore! The video recording of a performance gets digitally archived and stored in a special programme in a computer. Here, Wei Lian can label the recording with even more details such as the names of the artists and crew that were involved in this performance. 

With this digital archive, Wei Lian doesn’t have to access the physical archive as often as before!

The digital copy of the poster gets stored in the digital archive. And the physical poster itself? Wei Lian carefully slots each poster in its own plastic sleeve to keep it safe and clean, and then it’s kept away in a poster storage bag to be preserved safely!