National Library serves Turkish culture and history for 72 years

ANKARA

Turkey’s largest archive library, the National Library in the capital Ankara, has been serving as cultural memory of Turkey with a collection of millions of pieces for 72 years.

The National Library, which carries the mission preserving, classifying and presenting all kinds of written and visual heritage that it has and transferring it to future generations, was founded in 1946 and opened for people on Aug. 16, 1948.

Some 800,000 people receive service annually in the library, which is affiliated with the General Directorate of Libraries and Publications, while an annual average of 2.5 million people are offered library services on the Internet.

Some 800,000 people receive service annually in the library, which is affiliated with the General Directorate of Libraries and Publications, while some 2.5 million people annually are offered library services on the Internet.

Among the National Library services offered on the Internet are “Catalog Search,” “Digital Library System,” “Bibliography of Turkey,” “Audio Library” for the visually impaired citizens, “Gramophone Record Collection” and “European Digital Library” (Europeana). Web archiving is also planned to be implemented in 2021.

As of July, the library’s collection includes 1,437,008 printed books, 1505 rare manuscripts with Latin letters, some 272,695 periodicals, 154,056 non-book materials, 26,0362 rolls of microfilm collection. Also, services are provided to researchers with 21 electronic databases.

In addition to the first printing books printed in Arabic letters during the Ottoman period, the National Library also has a collection of rare printed books with Latin letters before 1801.

Millions of digital content produced

Much visual content such as valuable manuscripts, newspapers and magazines starting from the late Ottoman period and the first period of the Republic, paintings by famous painters and cinema posters can be accessed through the digital library system of the National Library, which includes 11,128 million items.

Thanks to the system, researchers can access the rich Turkish history from any place with an Internet connection, regardless of time and place, for its use in cultural and scientific studies.

Within the scope of digitalization studies, priority was given to Turkey’s biggest collection of periodical and the precious manuscripts. Nearly 16 million digital content have been produced so far.

In the audiobook archive, which was established for the visually impaired citizens to benefit from the library services, there are more than 5,000 books that have been voiced in different categories such as novels, poems, essays, stories and psychology.

Besides, among the books voiced with the support of volunteers, those whose editing and control are finished every Friday, are published on the web page, and these audiobooks are added to the archive.

The National Library, which exchanges or donates books to the countries close to Turkey in terms of history and culture, has so far sent some 10,000 books to the libraries abroad.

On the other hand, in the “Restoration and Conservation Laboratory” of the National Library, around 10,000 manuscripts and rare artifacts are protected against the corrosion.

With the gramophone record system, which is one of the most special services of the library, some 6,200 records in the collection were transferred to the digital medium and presented to the taste of music lovers on the Internet.

Also, due to the ongoing pandemic, a small studio was established at the National Library and the events that could not be organized in public libraries were presented to Turkey on social media. The events still take place in the studio, open for their followers on social media.