GENERAL INFORMATION
The main function of the Library and Documentation Centre
of the Turkish Grand National Assembly (TBMM) is to support legislative
activities of Members of Parliament (MP), auditing the government,
representation and duties related to their constituencies by providing every
sort of information and documentation.
During the process of transformation into the
information society, it has become more difficult to provide the incredibly
increasing information sources, as well as to organise them and put into
service these information sources effectively by means of classic library
techniques. If parliamentary librarianship characterised by the necessity of
quick and efficient service criteria is included in this, the difficulty and
importance of the work would be better stated.
It is from this point of view that the TBMM Library
has widened the scope of its library services to include research,
documentation and information services. The Library provides accurate,
reliable, unbiased information and research services to the Members of
Parliament across the range of their legislative duties. The contents of the
services supplied are as follows:
Library Services: To collect,
organise and serve books, newspapers and periodicals, reference sources,
minutes of the Parliamentary Debates and other information sources, including
the provision of book loans service, and production and serving microfilm
copies.
Documentation Services:
To make content analysis of newspapers, periodicals and the Journal of Minutes
of TBMM's Debates. In addition, to prepare various databases for World Wide Web
and to update them.
Research Services: Related to
the legislative activities of the Members of Parliament, and in accordance with
their demands, to prepare information profiles and analytical research reports.
Furthermore, without being bound with the existence of formal requests, making
researches on important subjects evolving in Turkey and the world, and on the
subjects which are on or may come to the TBMM's agenda.
HISTORY
Following the proclamation of the First Constitutional period, the first
Turkish Parliament that consisted of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies
convened on 19 March 1877 in Çırağan Palace, İstanbul. We do have documentary evidence of the establishment
of libraries in the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies during the Second
Constitutional period (1908-1920). The Library of the Turkish Grand National
Assembly contains, in its collection, some 5.000 volumes bearing the stamps of
the Chamber of Deputies Library and the Senate Library, including books,
newspapers, journals and minutes in Turkish and other languages showing that
there were two different libraries in the Parliament in that period. The
Standing Orders of the Chamber of Deputies, dated 1916, stated that the Library
was a service unit within the administrative organisation attached to a special
committee.
Only five months after the establishment of the Turkish Grand National
Assembly, a Deputy made a motion prescribing that a library was to be
established, and that funds were to be allocated for this purpose. This
proposal was accepted at the 74th meeting of the Turkish Grand National
Assembly on 28th September 1920; and in accordance with the Standing Orders,
which remained in force as the Standing Orders of the Turkish Grand National
Assembly until 1927, a five Member Library Committee was elected. Thus, the
Turkish Grand National Assembly Library was officially founded.
On December 21, 1960, the Parliament moved to its present building. It
has served as the Parliament building since its opening. The Library, which was
specially taken into consideration during the planning stage of the building,
has served in its original place ever since.
LOCATION
The Library and Documentation Centre is located in the east wing of the
TBMM building. It occupies 2.550 square meters. Reading rooms are located at
each side of the entrance to the Library. The Turkish dailies reading room is
on the right. The collection of foreign dailies, along with Turkish and foreign
journals, are placed in the room on the left. Only some of the subscribed
journals are displayed in this room.
Offices of the Librarian and the Deputy Librarians, Research Service,
Loans and Photocopying Services are located in the corridor between the
Entrance and the General Reading Room.
The Big Reading Room at the end of the corridor provides a comfortable
working atmosphere to the readers with its tables suitable for individual or
group work, general reference books, and thanks to its special lighting. The
information section which is comprised of library specialists helps readers to
use the library sources effectively and find the information that is looked up.
4-storey depositories which are located under the General Reading Room
contain the books, newspapers and journals that constitute the main collection.
The length of the shelves the Library has for storing its source materials is
around 8 kilometres.
The offices of Minutes Documentation, Cataloguing-Classification,
Newspaper Documentation, Journal Documentation and Microfilm Services are
located downstairs, which is reached via the stairs leading to the corridor
between the Entrance and the General Reading Room.
Additionally, besides the Library's facilities in the Main Building, the
Assistants' Reading Room in the Public Relations Building serves the assistants
of MPs. In this room, daily newspapers and some weekly journals are available,
and photocopies can be obtained upon request.
ACCESS
All sorts of information and documentation needed by MPs in order to carry
out their legislative duties can be provided by the Library. The Library also
serves former Deputies. Information requests are accepted in person, by
telephone or by letter. Requests on specific subjects can be channelled to the
related divisions.
Library services also include preparing reports, fact sheets, etc. on
various subjects upon request. Research staff, whose educational backgrounds
are in law, economics, international relations, political science, public
administration, etc. carry out the mission.
Examining and copying newspapers are available on microfilm rolls which
have been produced in the modern microfilm unit. Newspapers are microfilmed. To
prevent wearing out bindings, examination of the microfilm is allowed rather
than examination of printed materials.
Press clipping services are in electronic text format. The database
covers five nation-wide newspapers in the period 1991-1997, and all Turkish
nation-wide newspapers after 1998. External access to the database is available
from the offices of parliamentary committees and political party groups.
Current and former Members of Parliament and TBMM (Türkiye
Büyük Millet Meclisi, The Turkish Grand National
Assembly) staff may borrow all source material except for rare books,
manuscripts and reference works. Before taking the source material, borrowers
must sign a voucher. Minimum borrowing period is 20 days. The period may be
extended for the following 10 days.
External users, who are not able to find the source material in any
other library, have to get working permission from the Library Committee to use
the Library. External users cannot borrow any material and the working
permission is limited to 15 days.
WORKING HOURS
The Library is open on weekdays from 09:00 a.m. to 06:00 p.m., continuously
during the plenary sessions. The Library is always in charge while plenary
sessions are in progress. The Library is open on weekends from 10:00 a.m. to
04:00 p.m. except for religious and national holidays or the TBMM recess, with
service limited to the newspaper and periodical reading rooms.
ORGANISATION
The
Library unit is a directorate which is subordinate to the Department of Acts
and Resolutions in the TBMM General Secretariat Organisation. At the present
time the Library employs a staff of 85.
LIBRARY SERVICES
Efficiency and productivity in parliamentary work are closely related
with the degree to which Parliamentarians are informed. The Library, which is
organised to maintain this principle, carries out a systematic monitoring of
the domestic and foreign publishing world while acquiring selected materials,
cataloguing, classifying and finally presenting them to the readers.
The Library has a rich collection both in Turkish and foreign languages in
the field of law, economics, public administration, philosophy, sociology,
local administrations, international relations, history and geography, etc.
Since 1976 the Library has been
collecting all sorts of domestic publication free of charge according to the
Collecting Law. At the present time approximately 300.000 volumes of books in
Turkish and foreign languages are in MARC format.
The Data Processing Centre is developing software to make our collection
available over the Internet. Though the project is at the test level, our rich
collection is available at the national and international level on the Internet
at the web site http://www.tbmm.gov.tr/develop/owa/kutuphane_giris.baslangic
To the collection is yearly added
5.000-6.000 new items of literature written in Turkish and 1.000-2.000 in
foreign languages. If Members of Parliament cannot find the publication which they
need in the Library collection, they can request it by filling out an
application form. After such requests are examined and approved by the Library
Committee an order is given, and when the publication arrives the person making
the request is informed.
In 2001, in total 11.440 readers consisting of 6.425 Members of
Parliament, 1.715 former Members of Parliament, 2.430 staff and 870 researchers
benefited from the Library, and nearly 40.000 books were examined in the
Library while 12.696 books were loaned.
The
periodical collection consisting of approximately 54.838 volumes of newspapers
and journals in Turkish and foreign languages is one of the richest in Turkey.
Each year
about 1.500 volumes are added to the periodical collection through legal deposit,
purchases and gifts.
All
Turkish newspapers and journals printed in old scripts, available in the
collection, have been preserved on microfilm. Therefore, instead of printed
forms users are given microfilms from which copies can be made.
As with
all libraries, in the TBMM Library periodicals, whether bound or not, cannot be
removed from the premises, and cannot be loaned, nor can an entire issue or
volume be photocopied.
Members of
Parliament benefit from Turkish or foreign newspapers and journals in the
reading rooms located at either side of the entrance corridor.
Members of
Parliament fill out a form to request acquisition of periodicals which are not
available in the collection. Their requests are evaluated by the Library.
Committee
and the result is communicated by the Library Directorate to the owner of the
request.
The
microfilm collection of bound Turkish newspapers and old script journals in the
periodical collection of the TBMM Library is 5.765 rolls with 40 rolls added
per month on average, the collection can be accessed by means of modern reading
and reading/press equipment.
Work is under way for the
development of the collection and modernisation of equipment in the microfilm
unit, from which 250-300 users on average benefit for a year and 40.000 pages
of printed copies have been provided on average for a year.
DOCUMENTATION SERVICES
The Library and Documentation Centre also performs services related with
providing information to researchers, especially via Internet. The Republic of
Turkey database located on the web site of the TBMM lists Members of the
Cabinet as well as giving the government programmes, coalition protocols and
votes of confidence. Work is also under way to add plenary session debates of
the government programme.
A political parties database and the database including President's
opening address of the TBMM are available on the Internet at the Parliamentary
web site.
NEWSPAPER DOCUMENTATION
The newspaper database which answers as fully as possible the need of
Members of Parliament to scan the daily Turkish press and take written copy,
and which was limited to five newspapers between 1991-1997, since 1998
comprises majority of the daily press except local dailies (full text).
From the database including more than 620.000 newspaper items to which
200 are added daily a search can be made using options such as author name,
subject, newspaper name, genre of writing and date interval.
Newspaper Database is only available on the Intranet of the Parliament.
The newspaper database can be accessed from some workstations of Library and
Documentation Center, political party groups, and the
personal computers in the offices of Members of Parliament.
PERIODICAL DOCUMENTATION
Periodical documentation currently is under way on 290 selected
periodicals with the aim of providing information comprehensively and quickly
to Members of Parliament.
The periodical documentation unit, which was launched in 1997 and for
which expansion is planned and provided that problems of sufficient qualified
staff, space and equipment can be solved, has indexed over 66,030 periodical
articles at the present time and their bibliographical records can be accessed.
The computer programs required in order to offer the service of
periodical documentation efficiently has been prepared by the Data Processing
Unit. When the software is ready it will be possible to access periodical
articles as texts and to offer a "Selected Information Publication"
service to meet the needs of Members of Parliament as well.
MINUTES DOCUMENTATION
Minutes documentation services have been under way since 1991. The
Parliamentary Debates of the period since the 17th term (1983), the
periods of Consultative Assembly (Danışma Meclisi) (1981-1983), National
Security Council (Milli
Güvenlik Konseyi), Plenary Session (Birleşik Toplantı),
Milli Birlik Komitesi,
Constituent Assembly (Kurucu
Meclis) and Representative Assembly (Temsilciler Meclisi)
have been indexed in digital form but it is not available on the Internet. The
Library continues to index the period before 1983. The Parliamentary Debates
(from 1996 onwards) (full text) are available on the Internet at the
Parliamentary web site http://www.tbmm.gov.tr/.
The Debates Database is planned to comprise all the debates since 1877 in the
long term.
RESEARCH SERVICES
The participation of Members of Parliament effectively in the legislative
process primarily depends on the precondition that they are provided with
assistance by a strong information system. However, because of the plethora of
information, traditional library and documentation services are not adequate.
For this reason, the need to analyse information has increased day by day.
In 1982, TBMM Library established within its own structure a Research
Service in parallel with the practices of the Parliaments of the developed
countries.
At present, this unit, in which are employed subject specialists with
educational backgrounds in the fields of economics, international relations,
political science, public administration, the majority of whom have
postgraduate and doctorate degrees, and most of whom know foreign languages, principally
meets demands in the direction of the research needs of Members of Parliament
or follows current internal and international developments, preparing fact
sheets or research reports accordingly.
In performing their
functions, the research staff in case of necessity, maintain contact with
public institutions, universities, professional organisations, the media, and
also with foreign Parliaments and international organisations and obtain
information.
In 2001, 664 applications were made to the research service which issued
92 written answers, 10 research reports and replied 562 publication search and
document preparation demand.
The research service has prepared 220 research reports, 30 information
notes and 53 country reports to date. 7 of the research reports have been
published as books. These are:
1.
Election, Election Systems and
Practices in Turkey
2.
The Election Laws of The EEC
Countries
3.
Value Added Tax
4.
Free Trade Areas: A General
Evaluation
5.
Land Reform and Turkey
6.
Relations between EC and Turkey
7.
Elections Regulations in Various
Countries
Work has been continued to make some
of the research reports prepared by Research Service available over the Internet.
TELEPHONE NUMBERS
|
|
|
İsmet BAYDUR Director |
+90 312 420 6835 +90 312 420 6836 |
|
Tuncer YILMAZ Deputy Director |
+90 312 420 6837 +90 312 420 6851 |
|
Cihan ERKAL Deputy Director |
+90 312 420 6838 +90 312 420 6852 |
|
Readers Service |
+90 312 420 6840 +90 312 420 7564 |
|
Book Loans |
+90 312 420 7547 |
|
Research |
+90 312 420 6839 +90 312 420 7549 +90 312 420 6853 |
|
Newspaper Documentation |
+90 312 420 6847 +90 312 420 7558 |
|
Periodical Documentation |
+90 312 420 6849 |
|
Minutes Documentation |
+90 312 420 6854 |
|
Access |
+90 312 420 7545 |
|
Cataloguing and Classification |
+90 312 420 7546 |
|
Periodicals |
+90 312 420 6841 +90 312 420 6842 |
|
Microfilm |
+90 312 420 6843 |
|
Photocopy |
+90 312 420 6845 |
|
Depot |
+90 312 420 6844 |
|
Assistants’ Reading Room |
+90 312 420 7550 |
|
Administrative Office |
+90 312 420 7545 |
|
Internet Address |
|
|
E-mail |
|
|
Fax |
+90 312 420 7548 |
|
Mail Address |
TBMM Kutuphanesi 06543 Bakanliklar ANKARA/TURKEY |