The Libraries of Turkey

Abstract

r-,-_~HE library situation in Turkey is characterized by an almost fantastic number of Islamic manuscnpts and by a library service which is below the standard set in western Europe and North America. Perhaps no community in the modern world has gone forward so rapidly as Turkey; and, in the case of library service, much of this progress has been made in the last decade and is still continuing. Despite Turkey's relative poverty (by western European standards) and the many difficulties involved in reconciling oriental and occidental traditions, library service in Turkey is developing rapidly. Perhaps the greatest handicap to Turkish librarianship is the lack of any facilities for systematic professional training. For the last decade Adnan Otiiken, now director of the National Library (Milli Kiitiiphane) in Ankara, has been giving a series of lectures for two hours a week over a two-year period in the University of Ankara. This course has had the very salutary effects of giving some preliminary training and of recruiting many capable young people. However, it is no substitute for the intensive professional training received by librarians in the English-speaking world or for organized systems of apprenticeship and state examinations such as exist in many other countries. Turkish librarians and officials of the Ministry of Education recognize this situation and are making definite plans to give more formal professional training. There will be many difficulties, not the least of which is the fact that there is virtually no professional literature (except for an excellent two-volume introduction to library science and bibliography by Adnan Otiikenl). However, there are promising signs. The newly organized Turkish Library Association is planning to issue an official periodical, and several individual librarians are working on bibliographies, translations, and independent studies. Another handicap is the lack of suitable buildings. Except for some gems of seventeenthand eighteenth-century architecture in Istanbul (the Koprului, the Ahmet III, the Ragip Pa~a, and the Nuruosmaniye), the only building in Turkey expressly constructed as a library is the Robert College Library. One building in the Faculty of Agriculture in Ankara has a well-planned wing with a modem stack well (four tiers, with provision for a fifth) and a poorly planned combination library for the faculties of Law and of Economics in Istanbul with modern steel stacks. A wing planned specifically for library use is under construction for the National Library in Ankara. Otherwise, all Turkish libraries are adaptations of buildings originally constructed for other purposes. The building occupied by the National Library was first intended as a night club for government employees. Most of the libraries of Istanbul are in old medreses or outbuildings of mosques. Most of the university faculty and institute libraries are crammed into any available space that can be found. Fortunately, nearly all libraries are in fireproof or fire-resist-