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A Historical Glance at the Development of the Current Turkish National Bibliography and Other Major Bibliographical Sources in Turkey

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2016

Özer Soysal*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Letters, University of Ankara

Extract

“Bibliography”, as a concept and as an instrument to control the products of intellectual and artistic activities, has had a long history of evolution in Turkey as in other countries of the world. Kâtib Çelebi (1609-1657), a seventeenth century Turkish scholar, who is known as Haji Khalifah by Westerners, produced his famous work “Keşfu’z-Zunûn ‘an Esmái’1-Kütübi ve’1-Fünûn” in the middle of that century, and this was first published by Gustav Fluegel in seven volumes between the years of 1835–1858, in Arabic and Latin with the title of Lexicon Bibliographicum et Encyclopaedicum. This work marks one of the summits of bibliographical evolution in Turkey. More than three hundred years have passed since the appearance of this monumental work which is universally considered as an important contribution to human knowledge. So far the Turkish intellectuals have not been able to produce another work of this calibre, however they have always been aware of the importance of bibliographical activities for a changing society. I will soon try to draw a picture of the scene of the bibliographical activities in today’s Turkey by giving some concrete examples.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Middle East Studies Association of North America 1977

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