About Us

 Picture Archives Singapore, or PICAS, is a text and image retrieval system on the web developed by the National Archives of Singapore (NAS).

Why Picas?
Since the establishment of the National Archives of Singapore (NAS) in 1968, we have built up a huge collection of historical photographs. To effectively disseminate these images and serve the public better, PICAS was created, by using the latest IT.

There are two modes of search available. 'Simple Query' for a general search, and 'Specific Query' for a more precise search.

Preserving Our Heritage
The captions in PICAS may not necessarily correspond to the actual images. This is because we have adopted the group description captions provided by the transferring agencies. In addition, one roll of negatives has one description but the various exposures may be of a variety of scenes.

However, NAS is in the process of enhancing the captions with more details and it will be some time before we complete the estimated 1 million images that will be made available in PICAS. Meanwhile, we welcome your help in identifying undated or wrongly captioned photographs.

NAS is always on the lookout for old pictures of Singapore. If you wish to donate or loan to us pictures or slides which are relevant to Singapore's history and heritage and are not in PICAS, NAS would be interested to hear from you.