116-year-old school's archive digitized

ISTANBUL

The archives of many names who studied at Istanbul’s 116-year-old Kabataş High School, one of Türkiye's most prestigious educational institutions, were digitized by the school principal, daily Hürriyet has reported.

In the past, many famous names who became literary figures, artists, journalists and prime ministers passed through the venerable institution. The archives of the school are full of documents from the student years of these names. Principal Muharrem Bayrak digitized the high school's archives in order to preserve these valuable documents.

An intensive work started in the high school's archive six months ago. A team was assigned in August 2023 to digitize the school's archive, full of scattered and worn documents.

With the support of the Kabataş High School Education Foundation, the professional team worked overtime every day in the school archive, sorting and digitizing many documents such as diplomas, certificates of approval and registry books.

The archive work, which continues with the scanning of Ottoman documents dating back to 1928, also revealed figures such as the approximate number of students who graduated from high school. A total of 332,318 records were found in the digitized archive.

Stating that similar work has been done before at universities, but this is the first time it has been implemented at the high school level, Bayrak said, "With this work, the centuries-old archive of our school has been digitized. We considered protecting our historical archive as one of our biggest responsibilities."