Turkey opens more libraries in 2019

ISTANBUL

The number of libraries in Turkey reached 32,411 in 2019, a 3.05 percent rise from 31,451 the year before, data from the Turkish Statistics Institute (TÜİK) showed on June 19.

Turkey had one national library, 1,182 public libraries, 610 university libraries and 30,618 formal and non-formal education libraries in 2019, according to data.

The number of registered members of the national library skyrocketed to 137,014 in 2019 from 23,747 in the previous year.

The number of people who used sources from the national library increased by 12.2 percent, reaching 711,523.

Public libraries had 3.9 million registered members, a 39.3 percent rise from 2018.

In addition, the number of people using sources from public libraries was up by 11.4 percent, increasing to 31.4 million.

There was a decline in the number of registered members in university libraries. The number for 2019 was 3.5 million, whereas it had been 3.9 million in 2018.

The national library had 1.4 million books in 2019, a 1.3 percent decline from the previous year.

The number of public libraries in the country rose by 1.7 percent to 1,182, with the number of books there increasing by 3.9 to 20.7 million.

 “Turkey has libraries in 198 universities. The number of university libraries rose by 2 percent to 610 in 2019,” said TÜİK on its website, adding that the number of books saw a slight jump by 2 percent to 17.9 million.

The number of e-books at university libraries saw a 6.8 percent increase to 98.2 million.