Istanbul Cultural Heritage Digital Library (DijitalKütüpİST)
ISTKA PROJECT
(TR10/21/YEP/051)
The management of cultural heritage has been one of the most important issues for societies throughout history. In this direction, the issues of identifying the cultural values of societies and protecting these values, processing them to transfer them to future generations and ensuring their accessibility have revealed a field of study that concerns multiple disciplines. Librarians, rare artifact specialists, book conservation and restoration specialists, linguists and information technology specialists work in harmony to bring many cultural assets to light and make them accessible. In its International Cultural Tourism Charter published in 1999, the International Council on Monuments and Sites defined cultural heritage as the expression of lifestyles that a society has developed and passed on from generation to generation, consisting of experiences, traditions, places, objects, artistic expressions and values. In addition, cultural heritage is an element that reflects the common past of society, strengthens feelings of solidarity and unity by showing commonalities and differences, ensures the continuity of historical accumulation and offers new learning opportunities. The characteristics listed for cultural heritage increase the social functions of libraries, archives and museums as institutions that collect and process cultural heritage products. In order to meet changing user expectations with technological developments, these institutions offer new services by improving their infrastructure facilities. One of these services, digitization and digital collections, provide cultural memory institutions with significant advantages in terms of presenting cultural heritage products.
Our country, which is extremely important in terms of cultural and natural assets, has a rich and great cultural potential. The rare artifacts of our country are treasures. The accessibility of these artifacts through a single interface is of great importance for both our country and the world.
The project was initiated with 4 partner universities in the first stage and was designed to increase the number of partners/stakeholders in the following processes.
Project Partners: Istanbul University, Istinye University, Ibn Haldun University, Fatih Sultan Mehmet Foundation University
Within the scope of Istanbul Development Agency "Innovative Istanbul Financial Support Program" TR10/21/YEP/051 numbered Istanbul Cultural Heritage Digital Library;
- 35,000 rare works of cultural heritage to be cataloged in accordance with international librarianship standards.
- Digitization of approximately 700,000 (seven hundred thousand) images (pages) of the works with a scanner.
- New automation/digital content scanning system and software development are planned.
Targeted Project Outputs:
- Cultural heritage is easily accessible to the researcher regardless of time and space,
- Increasing the number of digitized works of cultural heritage value in Istanbul libraries, thus contributing to the increase in the country's digital cultural heritage collection,
- Contributing to education and scientific studies in different disciplines and creating a facilitating effect,
- Preserving the cultural heritage values of the works, creating digital access and transferring them to future generations,
- Providing researchers with the opportunity to read, interpret and identify the social, cultural, economic and political history of past periods through various collections of cultural heritage value,
- Setting an example of digital resources that can be evaluated within the framework of cultural heritage that have been produced institutionally in our country to date,
- Experience sharing and partnerships on digitization,
- Providing digitization training within the scope of the project and increasing the number of qualified personnel on the subject,
- The contribution of the outputs of this project to the prestige and brand value of Istanbul University and stakeholder universities and our country in the national and international arena,
- Contributing to the Digital Transformation Strategy of our country,
- Making the works made available digitally accessible available to a wide audience and raising awareness through exhibitions, publications, documentaries, etc. within various concepts in Turkey and abroad.
Common Digital Platform Key Features:
- The platform was created in such a way that all institutions can enter their own data in the background in accordance with international standards.
- In this way, institutions will be able to share their Cultural Heritage materials on this common platform, other institutions will be able to access the works on this platform, direct their digitalization efforts in a more qualified way, and avoid unnecessary time and financial losses.
- According to the Dublin Core standard, this platform can be used to share magazines, photographs, newspapers, engravings, maps, calligraphy, books, articles, musical scores, theses, manuscripts, as well as audio, video (video), etc. PDF, JPEG, TIF, MP3, PNG, MOV, MP4 as well as GIF, BMP, MPG, WMA, ASF, WAV, AVI, DOC, XLS, ZIP and all similar formats can be uploaded.
The transfer of scanned works to the project is still ongoing.
Link to access the resources in the project: http://dijitalkutupist.istanbul.edu.tr
Link to access the resources in the project: http://dijitalkutupist.istanbul.edu.tr
Social media accounts of the project:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DijitalKutupIST/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DijitalKutupIST
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dijitalkutupist/
