When this roundtable was just a seed of an idea, it was really a reaction to a demonstrated lack of interest in producing inclusive pedagogies. Both on social media and in private conversations, students expressed a desire to see more diverse syllabi and approaches; the discourse became even more divided as more time passed, giving us temporal distance from the Black Lives Matter protests of summer 2020, a reaction to the murder of George Floyd. Educators said they did not think more inclusive pedagogies were necessary. But there was also a rush to make syllabi and lecture series more inclusive by simply assigning diverse writers, a perspective that was perhaps equally damaging. This roundtable is an attempt to push past this. Over the coming weeks, Hazine will be releasing three essays on pedagogy; it is a selection that emphasizes equitable teaching, rebellious teaching, teaching that uplifts students and gives their ways of thinking recognition. They raise questions of technique. Our roundtable features educators from a variety of settings with different areas of expertise and are tied together by their thoughtfulness and intelligence. No matter your field, no matter if you are an educator or not, this roundtable will delight and challenge you to think about how we as diverse societies and communities have access to information.
We will be releasing the series over the next few months (and will be linking the pieces below as they are released). There are three in total. We will be taking a break midway through to allow for other content, but check back regularly, subscribe or follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
Image taken by Heather Hughes at UCSB Library Special Research Collections
How does music constitute an archive? What happens when we listen to or play music from the past? Hazine is seeking 3-4 pieces on music and sound collections from the Mashriq, Maghreb, East Africa, West Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, the Caucasus, Turkey, Iran, Greece, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean that address the following topics:
Music collections and sources for the study of music and performers
Collecting sound recordings, either for institutional and personal collections
Radio, performance, and re-release as research or archive
Situating music history and sound collections in different fields
Musical transformations and traveling of songs/melodies in different contexts and places
Send pitches to hazineblog[at]gmail.com by February 14th, 2021.
Pitches should be no longer than 300 words and should be accompanied by a few sentences telling us who you are. For this call, we accept archives reviews, essays, resource guides, and are open to creative formats like zines and comics. We are open to different forms of style as we expand this category of the site but do have a look at the essays we’ve run previously, like this one on typography and this one on archivy, because they demonstrate what we’re really looking for: a strong point of view. Our standards for archive reviews are here, but we also take more narrative introductions to archives, like this one. Completed essays –if accepted– will be 2000 words or less. Deadlines for completed pieces are flexible. Each piece is paid 100 USD upon publication.
Why have many artists chosen the digital sphere to represent their artwork? How has it impacted the appearance of their work and the meanings conveyed? Hazine is seeking 3-4 pieces on the digital world and art from the Mashriq, the Maghreb, East Africa, West Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Turkey, or Iran. If you’re an artist, tell us what drives you to employ digital tools in your artwork and how these tools influence your work? Have you collaborated with other artists online? If you’re a consumer of art, how has viewing art online changed your relationship with it? Does it change the nature of consumption? Send pitches to hazineblog[at]gmail.com by Friday, January 22, 2021. To ensure a more organized process, please only send pitches and ideas by e-mail rather than through comments to this post.
Pitches should be no longer than 300 words and should be accompanied by a few sentences telling us who you are. Pitches (and pieces) are accepted in English and Arabic; we accept essays and are open to different forms. We are open to different forms of style as we expand this category of the site but do have a look at the essays we’ve run previously, like this one on typography and this one on archivy, because they demonstrate what we’re really looking for: a strong point of view. Completed essays –if accepted– will be 2000 words or less. Deadlines for completed pieces are flexible. Each piece is paid 100 USD upon publication.
لماذا اختار الكثير من الفنانين المجال الرقمي لممارسة الفن؟ كيف أثّر ذلك على شكل أعمالهم الفنية والمعاني التي يريدون إيصالها؟ ترغب خزينة في نشر من 3-4 مقالات عن العالم الرقمي وعلاقته بالفن في المشرق والمغرب وشرق أفريقيا وغرب أفريقيا وجنوب صحراء أفريقيا وآسيا الجنوبية وجنوب شرق آسيا وتركيا وإيران. إذا كنت فنانًا، أخبرنا ما الذي يدفعك نحو استخدام الأدوات الرقمية في أعمالك الفنية وكيف تؤثر هذه الأدوات على إنتاجك الفني. هل قمت بالتعاون مع فنانين آخرين على الإنترنت؟ إذا كنت من متابعي الفنون، كيف أثّرت مشاهدتك للأعمال الفنية على الإنترنت على علاقتك بالفن؟ هل غيّر الإنترنت طبيعة استهلاك الأعمال الفنية؟ قم بإرسال نبذة أو فكرة عن المقال الذي تريد أن تكتبه يوم الجمعة، 22 يناير، 2021 كحد أقصى إلى البريد الإلكتروني hazineblog[at]gmail.com.
لضمان عملية منظمة، نرجو إرسال النبذ والأفكار عبر البريد الإلكتروني فقط وليس من خلال تعليقات على هذا المنشور.
يجب ألا تكون النبذة أكثر من 300 كلمة وترافقها بعض السطور عن الكاتب. تقبل خزينة النبذ والمقالات باللغة العربية والإنجليزية، وترحّب بأساليب الكتابة المختلفة. نقوم الآن بتوسيع الجزء الخاص بالكتابة حول الفن على الموقع ويمكنك إلقاء نظرة على هذا المقال عن تصميم الخطوط الطباعية وهذا المقال عن الأرشفة لأنهم يُظهروا السمة التي نبحث عنها في الكتابة: وجهة نظر قوية. إذا تم قبول مقالك، يجب أن يكون 2000 كلمة أو أقل، وهناك مرونة في موعد تسليمه. سيتم دفع الكاتب 100 دولار أمريكي عند النشر.
I was fortunate to be able to participate in the Introduction to Islamic Manuscripts class taught by Dr. Marianna Shreve Simpson through the Rare Book School (RBS) in 2019. Simpson has had an extensive career curating, researching and teaching on Islamic art and book arts. She has held curatorships at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and the Walters Art Museum, along with a number of other roles.
RBS offers 5-day courses related to the history of the book on a variety of topics. The Introduction to Islamic Manuscripts Course was taught once in 2006, and then started being offered again in 2018. Over the course of a week, we learned about the different components of manuscripts with the collection at the Free Library in Philadelphia.
Besides enjoying the hands-on time with some lovely manuscripts, a big highlight was learning from Simpson! Given that there are limited opportunities to learn about Islamic codicology, or the study of books as material objects, I wanted to hear more about her interventions into this field, as well as her curatorial experiences.
A hazine or a khazina خزينة is a repository. It is where you put things. Accordingly, Hazine began as an archives review site in 2013, producing content relevant to Ottoman, Middle East and North Africa studies. Since ‘relaunching’ in 2018, with new editors, Heather Hughes and N.A Mansour, Hazine has continued to provide the research community with archive reviews, but the site was also reworked to be more broadly inclusive of cultural heritage and information science professionals and highlight their contributions to research on the Islamicate world across time. We introduced our new resource lists (including for visual sources and digitized collections), as well as interviews and essays, as we saw increased opportunities for Hazine as a publishing platform. We began to rethink the website’s visual identity. We have also added two editors, Shabbir Agha Abbas and Marwa Gadallah, to our team to support the demand for diverse content.
Hazine is not supported by any university, research center, or think tank. It is not funded by a private individual who has their own agenda. Its contributors and editors are all volunteers. To continue producing material responsibly, inclusively and ethically, we need funding. Over the next month, we are fundraising to give us a budget to support our expansion. At a very basic level, this will allow us to keep the lights on, paying for our web hosting services, which is up for renewal in August 2020. However, funding will also allow Hazine to
Pay our contributors –many of whom are graduate students, independent researchers or contingent faculty– an honorarium, in line with the ethics we hope to embody; provide a small stipend to our editors; compensate any experts we may consult with.
Continue to produce content more regularly and in other languages; expand our offerings, including digital humanities tools.
Translate existing content into other relevant languages using professional academic translation services.
Incorporate more materials for the general public, in collaboration with the public.
Employ a freelance graphic designer to produce a new logo and visual identity for Hazine.
Eventually apply for a 501 C3 license, which will allow us to apply for further funding and help with taxes.
Continue to build collaborative relationships across our many overlapping, shared communities.
We will need to raise a minimum of 5000 USD in order to begin to continue producing content and implementing changes along these lines; this will be our budget for the next year. If you have students you refer to our site, if you use our site yourself, if you appreciate the need for open-access and ethically produced content relating to history and knowledge production, and if it is comfortably within your means, please consider making a donation.You can make a one-time donation here or set-up for a recurring donation here. If you don’t have the means to donate, please share widely on social media and email your colleagues the link to our donation page: this will be a huge help.
Fundraising will allow Hazine to continue to operate independently and allow us the freedom that institutional ties might not be able to give us. We hope to be able to, funding permitting, send a small token of thanks to our funders.
(Special thank you to Neelam Hussain, Marcia Lynx Qualey, Marc Reyes, and Jasmine Soliman for their advice on fundraising)
Archnet for Bebek, Istanbul Fishing on the Bosphorus (Bebek, Istanbul, 1958, Walter Denny)
The Getty for Sainte Sophie (After 1883. Sébah & Joaillier. Pierre de Gigord collection of Photographs of the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey Series III, Getty Research Institute 96.R.14 (C19.8a))
The Department of the National Library in Amman, Jordan, is Amman’s main public library and the government’s center for processing its documents for archival purposes. To those interested in Jordanian political and administrative history, the Department has a selection of government documents, dating from independence until the late 1980s. However, these are also accessible online. Of greater interest is the Department’s sizable and well-preserved collection of periodicals spanning the greater Arab Middle East for the later half of the 20th century.
History
The Department’s origins lie with its predecessor, the Jordanian National Directorate for Libraries and Documents, established in 1977. In 1990, the Cultural Ministry recommended the closure of the National Directorate. In its place, it proposed the creation of a national library that would also serve as a processing center for archived government documents. Thus, the Department was inaugurated in 1994 with the stated purpose of preserving Jordanian history. Its current responsibilities include maintaining a national bibliography of all the books published in Jordan, as well as managing other libraries in the country and maintaining links with organizations abroad that process documents for archival purposes. Though unclear when it began, one of the Department’s major projects is to categorize and release governmental documents spanning an unspecified period (the 1950s to perhaps the late 1980s), presumably for research uses.
Collection
The Department’s library (3rd and 4th floor of the Department, 4th floor accessible from inside the 3rd floor) contains published materials. It houses a rather general book collection (all in Arabic, ranging from literature to copies of recent Jordanian textbooks) and the library does an excellent job ensuring it contains the latest Arabic-language publications. The search engine also allows you to run a keyword-search through the books themselves. However, the Department’s main attraction is their periodicals collection, most dating from the 1940s onwards, on the fourth floor of the Department. This includes anything from Arabic-language weeklies to bound copies of newspapers (like al-Quds). Such a well-preserved and concentrated collection of the region’s most prominent publications is an excellent resource for researchers interested in a wide range of topics.
The Department is also home to Jordan’s attempts at consolidating its governmental records dating from the 1940s. It is unclear what metric is used to determine which documents will be permitted for release, but currently, access to the hard copies is restricted to Jordanian citizens; theoretically, the number ID of the requested document would be submitted to the Documents Office (1st Floor of the Department) and documents will be released for 5 hours. To figure out which document you want and thus, its ID number, you can search keywords on the documents directory in Arabic and view a preview of the document.
However, non-Jordanians can still access these documents online through this ‘preview’ function on the search engine; the scans are remarkably clear and can be print-screened. This is a little more work than simply scanning the documents you want, but considering the Jordanian government has released very little by way of official government documents, the search engine is well-worth a visit.
The major concern with this collection is the lack of transparency; we have no way of knowing which documents have not been released and how many more documents exist. Documents might even be removed from the search engine and thus, from public use, at the government’s discretion. Additionally, documents are constantly being processed for release, which might complicate any research projects in process.
The Research Experience
The Department library is open stacks. Everything present in the library can be looked up in the catalogue. While this might work well with books- the catalogue is excellent- the periodicals are slightly more difficult to search via catalogue; even titles known to be in the stacks might not show up in a basic catalogue search. It’s more productive to browse and see what gems turn up. There is not really a procedure for re-shelving. The librarians prefer you leave any books and bound volumes at the desks in between the stacks and they’ll reshelve them at the end of the day.
There are no special requirements for access to the stacks (see Collection for conditions to access hard copies of archival materials); you simply have to sign your name in the guest-book at the library front-desk on the 3rd floor. The librarians are very friendly and helpful, but researchers without any knowledge of Jordanian dialects might struggle slightly with communication.
The Department is rarely ever busy, the library even less so. The few people who do come tend to read quietly at the many desks scattered throughout the stacks. The library has plenty of natural light, but no air-conditioning in the summer nor heating in the winter.
Access
The Department library is open to the public. The Department is open Sundays-Thursdays, from 8 AM to 3 PM, though the librarians generally like visitors out by 2.30 PM so they can have the library ready by closing time. Ramadan hours differ though, typically 9 AM to 1 PM.
The front door has a ramp installed and all floors are wheel-chair accessible via elevator except for the 4th floor which is only accessible by stairs from within the library on the 3rd floor.
Reproduction
Books and journals can be photocopied, but this must be done by speaking to a member of the staff who will gladly do it for you. There appears to be no limit to the pages that can be copied. Photographs are also allowed.
Transportation and Food
The Department is located off one of Amman’s central arteries-University Street- right next to the Sports City complex, adjacent to the Shmeisani neighborhood. It is not generally well-known by people living in the neighborhood, but is opposite the more-widely recognized Ministry of Civil Status and Passports and is also visible from in front of the Regency Hotel and the Royal Cultural Center.
You have several options for getting here from within Amman.
Taxi: the more expensive, although somewhat more convenient option. From nearby neighborhoods (Shmeisani, Tila’ al-Ali, Jabal Weibdeh, Jabal Amman, Abdali, Abdoun, the University) this should cost you between 1-2 JD, though from beyond 6th Circle, expect to pay a little more. Tell the taxi driver to let you off at the Royal Cultural Center or the Regency Hotel, preferably near the pedestrian bridge. At the pedestrian bridge, follow Haroun al-Rashid St. until you get to the library (about a minute) on the left.
Service: only viable if you’re coming from downtown or Weibdeh. Take the Abdali service, get off at Duwar al-Dakhiliyeh and walk in the opposite direction till you get to the first pedestrian bridge (after the Regency Hotel). At the pedestrian bridge, follow Haroun al-Rashid St. until you see the library (about a minute) on the left.
Bus: this option is really only viable if you’re coming somewhere off University Street. If coming from Abdali, take the bus going to the University or Sweileh and tell the conductor you’re getting off at the Royal Cultural Center. If coming from the University, take the bus going to Duwar al-Dakhiliyeh and tell the conductor you’re getting off at the Royal Cultural Center. At the pedestrian bridge, follow Haroun al-Rashid St. until you get to the library (about a minute) on the left.
The Department, being on a busy road, is far from most food options, though during the winter, food hawkers can occasionally be found on the right outside the Department selling sweets, steamed chickpeas, and corn. I recommend packing a lunch; you might not be able to eat it inside, since only water is allowed, but the Sports City park is a five minutes walk from the library and you could take a packed lunch there and eat outside. It’s a bit run-down, but there are places to sit and it’s very safe; families frequent the park at all hours to enjoy the open spaces.
Contact Information
Address: Number 9 , Haroun Al-Rasheed St.
P.O.Box: (6070)
Zip code: (11118)
City: Amman
Telephone: 06-5662791
NA Mansour is a graduate student at Princeton University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies working on the global intellectual history of the Arabic-language press. She tweets @NAMansour26 and podcasts in her spare time, working on the New Books Network’s Middle East Studies and Global Affairs Channel, along with another Middle-East and North Africa-related podcast: Reintroducing.
Note: This review was written in June 2015 following research in Milli Kütüphane between March and May 2015. Web links have been updated, but other details (e.g. photocopying fees, cafeteria prices) may no longer be accurate. Hazine readers are invited to submit updated information.
Turkey’s national library, near the center of Ankara, has a diverse collection of materials dating from the early Ottoman Empire to the present. The bulk of the collection, namely monographs and periodicals, is of interest to historians specializing in the late Ottoman and early Republican periods. With over 27,000 manuscripts from provincial Anatolian collections, this library is also the second-largest manuscript repository in Turkey after the Süleymaniye Library in Istanbul. The digitized online collections, including the manuscripts, Ottoman periodicals, and audiovisual material, may also be useful to researchers in earlier periods of Ottoman history, Islamic studies, as well as music, film, and art history.
History
The Turkish government began to collect materials for a national library in 1946 under the auspices of the Turkish Ministry of Education. This collection was first opened to users in 1948 with a catalog of 60,000 items, though the National Library was not established as a formal legal entity until 1950. The original intention was for the library to become a repository for copies of every publication produced in Turkey, but this plan was never completely realized. Nevertheless, as the collection and number of users continued to expand in subsequent decades, planning for the much-larger building that currently houses the collections took place between 1965-1973. Construction of the present building was completed in 1982 and opened to the public in the following year.
Collections
Although it does not hold every Turkish publication ever printed, the National Library surely holds the most comprehensive collection of printed material in late Ottoman Turkish (about 80,000 items) and modern Turkish (about 1 million items), with particular strengths in periodicals (including over 230,000 journals and newspapers). Some of these items are available on microfilm. The National Library has sizeable numbers of monographs in Arabic, English, French, German, and Persian, but primarily of more recent publications. The library also holds many CDs and DVDs, including some hidden gems like oral histories, but these collections are poorly identified; the oral histories, for example, seem to have been collected in a single unidentified project and the subjects are mostly Istanbul professionals speaking to unnamed interviewers in 2010. The National Library’s most unique collection is certainly the Atatürk Document Repository (Atatürk Belgeliği), which includes a wide array of textual and visual materials related to Kemal Atatürk’s life and legacy. This collection, open to users since 1983, contains 15,011 items ranging from books, magazine and newspaper clippings to paintings, sculptures, photographs, and newsreels, to personal items like passports, badges and lottery tickets.
The National Library provides some excellent online resources. Manuscripts, periodicals in Ottoman script, old gramophone recordings, and visual art materials (particularly paintings and film posters) have largely been digitized and are freely available online (links below). Anyone can search the digitized catalogs, but to view the results, you must create a free user account. There is a per-page charge for downloading digitized images. Due to the rather cumbersome process of working at the library in person, I would highly recommend that researchers interested exclusively with such materials register online and work from elsewhere
Access
Registration. No one can enter the library without a user card. There is a pre-registration form on the library website, which can be submitted before you arrive. Bring your passport to the user registration desk (past the metal detector at the entrance, and around the left-hand corner) to have your photo taken and receive your user card. If you did not have a chance to pre-register online, you can fill out the same form at a computer kiosk next to the registration desk.
If you’re a Turkish citizen, or if you’re a foreigner on a residency permit or research visa with your paperwork cleared in advance, this is the entire process. If you’re on a tourist visa, you’ll be sent off to an office down the hall to fill in the standard research permit forms to approve you for a foreign researcher (yabancı uyruklu araştırmacı) user card. The staff is generally monolingual in Turkish, so if you have any trouble communicating, get someone to lead you down to this office, where there are a few staff members who speak English. The forms, written in Turkish and English, are straightforward and you do not need a letter of introduction; your passport and, if applicable, an ID card from your institution will be all you need. Your forms should be approved on the spot, and you’ll be sent out to hand copies to another office and go back to the front registration desk, where you will finally get the user card. Cards are issued for periods ranging from three months to one year. My three-month card cost 5 TL.
Getting inside. Now that you have your card, get in line for the machines in the front lobby that assign spots in one of the six general reading rooms (one of these is reserved for professors, and another for high school students). Unfortunately, no one can enter the turnstiles into the library without a seat assignment, even if you intend to spend your time in a room without assigned seating (such as the rooms for viewing periodicals, microfilms, Atatürk documents, etc). The machines are straightforward: insert your user card, and you’ll be shown which rooms have available seating for you to select. It doesn’t matter much which room you choose unless you specifically want to use books printed in Ottoman script, in which case you must select the İbn-i-Sina Reading Room. After you have made your selection, take the receipt for your seat number, and your card will now unlock the turnstiles and permit access to the rest of the library.
When planning your research time, note that during the academic year, the library is overrun by Ankara’s large undergraduate population, and all the reading rooms tend to fill within an hour of opening. Once the library is full, it can take 1-2 hours or more of waiting in line by the entry machines before a slot opens up for you. To avoid this frustration, I recommend arriving up to a half hour before opening time (a line will already be forming). The other effect of this system is that you will not want to exit the library for longer than a ten-minute break until you are finished for the day. Ten minutes after you exit the front turnstiles, your seat assignment lapses and is made available to others waiting. Plenty of users duck outside to smoke a quick cigarette, but for food, you’re stuck with the library cafeteria (there’s barely enough time to cross the street to get to the next closest source of food).
During the summer vacation (mid-June to August) the competition for space is not quite as cutthroat; only those specifically using Ottoman-language materials and therefore needing space in the relatively small the İbn-i-Sina room may want to arrive early. You can monitor how full the reading rooms are directly on the library’s homepage under the heading “Okuma Salonları Doluluk Oranları.”
Requesting materials. In general, everything is requested via paper forms, and you can only submit three of these at one time (six for professors). There are computers on the second floor with access to the online catalog. For books, use the forms next to these computers and submit these to the “Okuyucu Bankosu” on the second floor. For periodicals or microfilm/non-book materials, go to the desk inside the periodicals room on the ground floor or the “non-book materials center” on the lower floor to fill out and submit the appropriate forms. Materials generally arrive between fifteen and twenty-five minutes after your request is received. The desk will hold on to your user card while you have the books, and give it back when you return them. Since you cannot exit the turnstiles without your user card, this is their way of preventing book theft. After hours and on weekends (only), you can request books online from the library website.
Reproductions
There is a photocopying service across from the Okuyucu Bankosu. As of May 2015, prices were 5 kuruş per A4 page (10 kuruş double-sided) or 10 kuruş per A3 page (20 kuruş double-sided). I did not use the service, but it appears that requests are fulfilled very quickly.
I never found any written policy on the use of digital cameras on modern materials, but I used mine to photograph twentieth-century books and periodicals in the reading rooms in clear view of staff and no one seemed to mind. Those working with older (Ottoman) or special materials should ask the reading room’s staff to confirm whether digital photography is acceptable for those items, especially since photocopying these materials is explicitly forbidden. Digitized materials and microfilms can be copied onto CDs/DVDs by staff; there is supposed to be a fee, but when I requested a DVD copy of an oral history recording, the staff refused to charge me anything.
According to the library website, researchers outside of Ankara can order materials to be scanned/copied and sent to them. I have no experience with this service.
Internet access: Free wifi seems to be available, but a Turkish mobile number is required to register for access to the wifi signal, so I was not able to test it. Wired internet access is available on the thirty computers of the “Interactive Salon,” really an open space on the same floor as the Okuyucu Bankosu. Access to these computers is granted by a machine that scans your user card, which limits you to one hour of internet use per day, and further prevents you from using these computers while in possession of any library books.
Food
Every floor has vending machines for bottled water and hot coffee/tea (only water bottles are allowed in the reading rooms). There is a cafeteria on the lower floor that sells simit and packaged snacks, hot and cold drinks, and basic hot meals (tost, köfte, spaghetti, salads and the like). Prices are low (up to 6 TL for a meal) and so is the quality of the food. Pay the cashier to the right of the entrance before taking your receipt to the food line on the left. Since there is no locker system, anyone who would rather pack their own lunch to eat in the cafeteria should have no problem doing so.
Getting there
The National Library is well served by public transit. It has its own Metro station on the new Kızılay-Koru line, which is definitely the most convenient option for anyone approaching from the east through Kızılay (Ankara’s transit hub) or the west from METU or Bilkent (Ankara’s main English-medium universities). There are also many bus and dolmuş lines departing from Ulus and Kızılay that stop in front of the library on İsmet İnönü Street.
Elise Burton is the Associates’ Research Fellow at Newnham College, Cambridge. She completed her doctoral studies at Harvard University in 2017 and her current research focuses on the history of genetics research in Iran, Turkey, and Israel since the First World War.
Our second interview for Deep in the Stacks is with Mehmet Kentel, Head Librarian, and Akın Özarslantürk, Branch Librarian at the AnadoluMedeniyetleri Araştırma Merkezi (ANAMED), or Research Center for Anatolian Civilization (RCAC).
Akın (l) and Mehmet (r)
How did you get interested in library work?
Mehmet: I think I can call myself as an ‘accidental librarian’, even though my primary identification would still be related to my ongoing work as a historian-to-be. I was a fellow at the Koç University’s Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations (ANAMED) during 2014-15 academic year. Towards the end of it, and inspired by the work being done at the center, I started thinking seriously on a professional/administrative position within the larger domain of academia, that is not necessarily entailed teaching. Jobs like curating exhibitions, working at research centers, libraries, etc. started to be increasingly relevant and exciting. Akın’s example as a librarian, who is not only extremely helpful, but also engaged with every step of a researcher’s work, was also inspiring. And at this very time, by total coincidence, Özge Ertem, the then-Head Librarian of the ANAMED Library, resigned from her post to continue her postdoctoral studies at Harvard University. Özge is also a historian of the Ottoman Empire, and I saw in her persona that these two professional identities may actually get along quite nicely. So I applied for the position, and I am lucky that they thought I would make a good match.
Akın: Similarly, I never planned to be a librarian even while I was studying librarianship. After I graduated I couldn’t find a better option so I decided to be a librarian.
Tell us a bit about the patrons that your library serves, how would you describe the community?
Mehmet: We have several groups of patrons, with varying needs and degrees of attachment to the institution. Of course, the Library is first and foremost the library of the ANAMED and its fellows. ANAMED hosts around 30-35 fellows for an academic year, some staying for full 9 months, some for shorter periods. These fellows come from various parts of the world and have a wide range of academic interests (from Neolithic archaeology to contemporary heritage issues) as well as standings (from PhD candidates to emeritus professors). Our main mission is to support and facilitate the research of these fellows. But ANAMED Library is also a branch of the Koç University Suna Kıraç Library, and hence we also serve Koç University professors and students. ANAMED has especially close ties with the Art History and Archaeology Department and the History Department. Their students and professors are among our most constant patrons. Lastly, we also serve a large community of researchers based in Istanbul, even though they are not affiliated with ANAMED or Koç University. We have a special membership program that admits researchers (scholars and graduate students) in relevant fields as members, for free. This last group do not have borrowing rights. And of course, we try to pitch in for the research conducted by the ANAMED staff, for exhibitions or for other projects.
Akın: ANAMED Library’s user community, which consists of graduate students and faculty, has experience of using the library resources, much different than undergraduates. They usually ask for help about accessing specific resources that is important for their thesis or research and how to use the library equipment.
What do you think is unique to the collection or resources at your library?
Mehmet: We have a relatively small collection, around 22000 print materials. But this collection is composed of very important contributions coming from seminal names in their fields. Our special collections include the collections of the eminent Byzantinists Steven Runciman, Eunice Dauterman-Henry Maguire and Jacques Lefort; of the famous Islamic Art Historian Esin Atıl; of the renowned Hititologist Hatice Gonnet-Bağana and Muhibbe Darga; of the important numismatist Ömer Diler; and of the iconic photographer and ethnographer Josephine Powell. Overall, I can say that our strength in print materials is the most evident in the works related to Byzantine history. But what makes ANAMED Library unique among other research centers located in Istanbul is its access to a great array of electronic resources. Since we are a branch of Koç University Library, we provide access to all electronic journals, books and databases that are available at the main library.
Have you identified any areas of the collection that you hope to digitize? Which ones?
Mehmet: Two of our collections are already and partially digitized. One of them is Josephine Powell’s slide collection, comprised of the pictures Powell took during her travels in Turkey, especially relevant to the researchers of rural and nomadic life in Anatolia. Hatice Gonnet-Bağana’s excavation notes and pictures are also digitized and accessible to researchers. I believe it will be an indispensable source for the researchers interested in Hittites and the history of Hittitology. All of these are accessible via Koç University Library Digital Collections. Koç University Suna Kıraç Library also digitizes its rare manuscripts collection, and any rare item we have in our collection are sent there to be digitized. In the future, we aim to attract collections with large numbers of primary materials, which would necessarily be digitized.
Akın: We must also state that the library collection is too young. I think the digitization should be the next step after deepening the specific areas of the print collection.
Collection management is often a creative act. How you see yourself shaping the collection?
Mehmet: The most attractive responsibility of the position as I was applying was collection development, and into my seventh month as the Head Librarian of the ANAMED, I still find it as my most exciting and fulfilling duty. It is indeed creative, in the most literal sense of the word, as it involves bringing together various works that do not necessarily belong to the same field, period, methodology, etc; but you try to relate them to each other, creating a dialogue. It is of course a very contingent act, too, as our choices to add to the collection is dependent on the preferences of the fellows, budgetary decisions of the library management, the new scholarly trajectories ANAMED decides to pursue, and even the currency exchange rates we have to consider.
Akın: The head librarian is in charge of the collection management. I, as a branch librarian, used to follow the publishers and book reviews and make an effort to determine deficient resources in the collection.
Mehmet: Actually following book reviews is probably the best part of the job. It allows me to follow trends in fields very different than my own, and to appreciate different disciplines and their methodologies, giving a much more holistic perspective to the past.
RCAC library and books
What are you priorities and dreams for the collection? Are there digital resources that you are excited about collecting?
Mehmet: I myself am an Ottomanist, and my natural inclination is to enrich our collections on the Ottoman history. This fits in nicely with the shared evaluation of the ANAMED Library by Koç University Library and ANAMED managements, as all of us acknowledge that the weakest part of our collection is Ottoman history, especially compared to the large ratio of Ottomanists among our most regular patrons. But this priority should not come at the expense of other collections, especially our collection on Byzantine history, which makes us one of the leading research centers in this field. So my dream is to acquire a special collection on Ottoman history, rich with primary and secondary sources, which would fill an important gap within our collection without sacrificing other fields. And in the meantime, we continue to expand our resources with the most recent publications in all of the relevant fields, thanks to the suggestions by ANAMED fellows and staff, Koç faculty, and library members.
One of ANAMED’s scholarly directions under its new Director, Chris Roosevelt, is digital humanities. The center aims to become a focal point for digital research in Turkey, not only supporting scholars working on digital projects but also conducting its own projects, including digital mapping and digital archive initiatives. The ANAMED Library should necessarily follow suit, increasing our digital resources, as well as reference resources on digital humanities, to reach higher levels of competency in digital resource technologies.
And in terms of more ‘conventional’ digital resources, I aim to provide access to a rich historical newspapers collection, and a fuller access to Hathi.
Akın: I agree, especially regarding the special collections. I think the ANAMED Library should have more special collections, because these will draw researchers looking for unique materials.
Librarians working on the Middle East often find themselves addressing questions over cultural heritage. What do you see as some of the most pressing cultural heritage concerns in Turkey?
Mehmet: I think one does not have to be a librarian to find issues of cultural heritage very close to home. As a researcher who works on Ottoman archives, the wellbeing of the centuries-old documents, as historical sources but also as artifacts of cultural heritage, has already been very pertinent to me. The lack of transparency and accountability worries me and many Ottomanists like me concerning the future of our field and the past of our geography. As an urban historian, issues of urban renewal, debates around transformation of historic districts as well as ‘rebuilding’ of long-gone historic sites, are of course very relevant. Issues of transparency and accountability are lacking in this aspect of cultural heritage, too, this time accompanied by huge material interests. And of course, in Turkey and in our wider geography, violence against people usually come with violence against their ecology and their built environment, which puts cultural heritage at a huge risk.
ANAMED supports research in cultural heritage, and we at the library try to raise awareness on these issues by expanding our collection to this end.
What do you think are some challenges in librarianship that are unique to Turkey? Alternatively what are its advantages?
Akın: Libraries don’t receive the value as much as they deserve in Turkey. This situation sometimes forces the librarians to be innovative with funding and providing services . The advantage of this challenge is that the librarians have an extra mission and motivation on telling people how the libraries are important and valuable
Mehmet: While I am sure librarians who work at the public libraries would have a very different take on this, as a librarian of a research library, I think the biggest challenge is the overwhelming gap between research conducted in Turkish and in foreign languages. These two fields speak to each other in a very minimum level and in very scattered forms. This makes the job of the librarian quite difficult in evaluating the quality and accessibility of scholarly output. The barrier created by the Ottoman Turkish (or the language reform) also influences the quality of research. Intellectual production in the Ottoman Empire until 1920’s is still largely inaccessible to researchers who cannot read Ottoman Turkish. It is alright if one is a historian of the Ottoman Empire. But what if a Byzantinist wants to look for Ottoman Turkish production in the nineteenth century, on, say, Byzantine Istanbul? Shall I add such rare materials to the collection, or wait for transcriptions? I of course do not go into the details of difficulties that affect the entire country and all professions, such as constantly increasing prices and fluctuating currency rates.
How do you see your institution as benefiting from international collaboration? Could it potentially address any of the challenges you mentioned previously?
Mehmet: As the ANAMED Library, we benefit from the international connections and channels of collaboration both of ANAMED and Koç University Library. We have exchange agreements with various international institutions. Such collaboration helps us in reaching to the best quality work produced in other countries, especially in languages other than Turkish and English.
We currently have a very important project of collaboration that is local in its scope but international in its nature: Supported by the Istanbul Development Agency, we are creating a union catalogue called BiblioPera, a joint website and a platform, for the libraries and research centers of ANAMED, SALT Research, French Institute of Anatolian Studies (IFEA), Istanbul Research Institute (IAE), Orient Institute Istanbul, German Archaeological Institute (DAI), and the Netherlands Institute in Turkey. While all of these institutions are located in Beyoğlu, many of them are tied to foreign governments or foundations, which gives the collaboration an international aspect. By August 2016, researchers will be able to access the catalogues of all of these institutions with one click. We want this infrastructure as a basis for further collaboration, not only among these institutions, but also other research libraries located in Istanbul.
What do you think are some of the most exciting developments in libraries and librarianship right now, in Turkey or elsewhere?
Mehmet: Certainly digitization and advancement of digital technologies in humanities, not only for its own stake, but also for allowing further collaboration among librarians and researchers in an unprecedented scope. My novice observation is that these tools force researchers and librarians to work more closely, and turn libraries into scholarly environments where knowledge is not only consumed, but also actively produced.
Akın: This is especially true for the rising generation of Turkish librarians, who are very curious and talented in terms of IT services. As a consequence, many quality works showed up on the digitization and open access scene. The works on these two areas in Turkey recently are especially very exciting
Do you want to mention or talk about anything else that we have not mentioned?
Mehmet: My partner in the ANAMED Library, and in this interview, Akın Özarslantürk, has recently resigned from his position to move to Istanbul Technical University Library. Akın has been working at the Koc University Library for four and a half years, and at the ANAMED Library since 2012, and has been a crucial factor in turning the Library into one of the most popular destinations for the scholarly community residing and researching in Istanbul. He has been the solid rock of the Library as head librarians and support staff have come and gone. His incredible skills in communication and library services made him one of the most popular librarians in Istanbul. I am sure there are readers of the Hazine blog who benefited largely from Akın’s skills. In their presence, I would like to thank him and wish him the best once again.
I also would like to thanks Hazine editors, especially you, Heather, for giving us the opportunity to talk about the ANAMED Library, and also for being so patient with us.
Finally, what is the best reference question you have received?
“Deep in the Stacks” is a new feature of HAZINE that highlights the work of librarians in shaping the research collections and agenda of the field of Islamic studies as a whole.
Our first interview is with Guy Burak, Middle East Librarian at the Elmer Holmes Bobst Library at New York University, guides.nyu.edu/mideast.
How did you get interested in library work?
I got interested in library work as a user in graduate school. At NYU, I worked quite closely with Peter Magierski (currently the Middle East librarian at Columbia). Then my dissertation research took me to other libraries in the Middle East, Europe and the US. Academically, I’m very interested in the circulation of texts, manuscripts and knowledge throughout the Islamic world, so in many ways I had been thinking about collecting and collections long before I became a librarian.
Tell us a bit about the patrons that your library serves, how would you describe the community?
Like most major research libraries, NYU’s Bobst Library serves the University globally (as NYU has portal campuses in Abu Dhabi and Shanghai and numerous study abroad sites), the broader academic community and, even more generally, the public. Although the physical access to most of our collection is restricted to scholars and students affiliated with NYU, we share our resources through interlibrary loan services and other consortia NYU is part of. Our special collections are open to the public. We are also in the process of digitizing much of our Arabic collection as part of the Arabic Collections Online (ACO).
Chez Guy
What do you think is unique to the collection or resources at your library?
In comparison to other research libraries, NYU’s collection is fairly young. That said, over the years NYU has built strong Arabic, Persian and Turkish/Ottoman collections. In addition, NYU has some interesting special collections, such as the largest collection in country of cookbooks (including cookbooks from the Middle East), a large collection of Afghan materials (now digitized as part of the Afghanistan Digital Library), a sizeable collection of Persian lithographs and an interesting collection of Ottoman books from the Hamidian period.
Collection management is often a creative act. How you see yourself shaping the collection?
One of the most exciting things about being a librarian or a curator is trying to imagine the potential use of materials – be they books, artifacts, or video and sound recordings – beyond the current state of the academic field. I sometime try to imagine a future reader and guess what she would like to know about the Middle East and the Islamic world. This exercise often guides my cataloging and curatorial decisions.
At the same time, I’m trying to bring materials to the attention of potential users, mostly graduate students who are looking for research topics for their seminar papers or dissertations.
What are you priorities and dreams for the collection? Are there digital resources that you are excited about collecting?
My main priority is serving the Library’s users. In the near future, I intend to build on the strengths of NYU’s collections and keep expanding our Arabic, Persian, and Turkish collections. I hope to devote more time to enhancing existing special collections and building new ones. As I said, I am also thinking about digitizing (selectively) the collection of Hamidian books. In the more distant future, I hope NYU will be able to embark on the second phase of the Afghanistan Digital Library, covering Afghan materials from later decades.
Have you identified any areas of the collection that you hope to digitize? Which ones?
NYU is already in the process of digitizing significant parts of its collections as part of the Arabic Collections Online and the Afghanistan Digital Libraries. Once we finish cataloging the Hamidian books, we hope to digitize them as well, as they are very brittle.
Librarians working on the Middle East often find themselves addressing questions over cultural heritage. What do you see as some of the most pressing cultural heritage concerns in the Middle East?
Quite evidently the most pressing concern is the destruction of cultural heritage sites, such as museums and libraries, in warzones throughout the Middle East. A related concern is the appearance of looted manuscripts – some could be “blood manuscripts” – and artifacts on the markets.
What do you think are some challenges in librarianship that are unique to the Middle East? Alternatively what are its advantages?
All I can say about Turkish libraries is based on my work there as a researcher. The obvious advantages of Turkey are the size and quality of its manuscript collections and archives. To me, the most urgent challenge is making those unique materials discoverable (if not available) to different audiences – both academic and non-academic. An interesting challenge is how to standardize the transliteration of titles in Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman in Turkish catalogs. The other major challenge is that many resources and manuscripts are not adequately described.
That said, I can say that things have improved dramatically since I started working in Turkey more than a decade ago. Also – a young generation of librarians is doing very important work in enhancing metadata and digitization.
How do you see your institution as benefiting from international collaboration? Could it potentially address any of the challenges you mentioned previously?
NYU has been and still is involved in several international collaborative projects, such as the Afghanistan Digital Library and ACO (AUB is one of the contributors to the project). That said, the collaboration with libraries in the Middle East and North Africa is still fairly limited. There are several reasons for this situation, the most significant of which are different practices and workflows (such as different cataloging conventions) and legal issues.
What do you think are some of the most exciting developments in libraries and librarianship right now, here or elsewhere?
To my mind, the most exciting development is the growing integration on different levels of the library and the cultural heritage worlds (in projects such as Europeana and Digital Public Library of America). The other exciting and challenging development is the collection and archivization of new contents, formats, and media.
Finally, what is the best reference question you have received?
It really depends on how you define what a “good” question is. I enjoy challenging queries that involve getting materials from obscure collections and small vendors. One of our users was interested in pamphlets published in late Ottoman Syria. It took me a few days to find them. In other instances, a “good” question is good because I’m interested in those questions. One of our graduate students, for example, wrote a very interesting thesis on the history of Middle Eastern studies collections during the Cold War and discussing the project with him was real fun.
“Deep in the Stacks” is a new feature of HAZINE that highlights the work of librarians in shaping the research collections and agenda of the field of Islamic studies as a whole. 