About Us

Library services are nowadays considered as information services. These services are of importance in terms of supporting educational activities and scientific research at all levels at universities.

Information services at universities are handled within library and documentation centers. Depending on the structure of universities, differences can be observed in the structure of information services. In universities with a central campus, library organizations have a central structure as well. In other distributed multiple-campus universities such as ours, library services, too, are spread out.

Ankara University consists of a total of 28 faculties and vocational schools situated in and around the city of Ankara and the neighboring areas. Therefore, information services are provided by faculty and vocational school libraries as well as by those of departments.

Muhlis Erkmen Library does not qualify as a main library. Therefore, the Directorate of Library and Documentation Center, which was located in this library before, was organized within the Central Building of the University Rectorate in March 2001 and then was moved to Sevket Aziz Kansu Building in October 2001. The Library and Documentation Center offers a reading room and an electronic library. The Center aims centralization through electronic library services, budgeting, selection and purchase of library materials in coordination with faculty libraries as well as technical services.

There are approximately 800.000 books in the faculty, vocational school and department libraries. We have also made considerable progress in setting up a union catalog, which serves as a centralization of library services.

A database program called BİL-SİS with 332.385 bibliographies in store belonging to 21 faculty and vocational school libraries as of April 2003 has been in use in all the faculties with Internet access. Also, the university libraries have 7984 periodicals, 17,000 manuscripts, 15,000 of which are located in the library of the Faculty of Letters, and 25,101 post-graduate theses. A total of 374,439 materials can be accessed electronically. Depending on the availability of experts, the work of electronic presentation of records is continuing. Individuals can use the interlibrary loan services to access materials located in other libraries.

The centralization of library services has been achieved through considerable progress in electronic library services since the 2000-2001 academic year.

The university participated in ANKOS consortium, which was previously launched in a few universities in Ankara and has recently gained membership from all of the universities. A total of 16 databases covering almost all subject areas, most of which are with full text access have been subscribed to for 2003. In addition, some databases are offered to universities for free trial. All databases can be accessed to through electronic libraries on our web site.

The Library and Documentation Center has been organizing coordinate monthly meetings with faculty library representatives in an attempt to achieve standardization in library services and to tackle problems on the spot.