Koç University Digital Collections Suna Kıraç Library

Overview

Koç University Digital Collections is an open-access digital repository maintained by Koç University's Suna Kıraç Library in Sarıyer, Istanbul, Turkey. It provides access to over 210,000 digitised or born-digital images and materials from the collections of the Koç University Libraries and affiliated research centres.

History and Background

Koç University was founded in Istanbul in 1993 as a private research university. The Suna Kıraç Library serves as the university's main library system, with branch libraries including AKMED (Antalya), ANAMED (Istanbul), and VEKAM (Ankara). The Digital Collections portal was developed as an initiative to provide centralised online access to the university's special collections and archival holdings.

Collections and Holdings

The portal contains more than 30 open-access collections spanning archaeology, architecture, Ottoman manuscripts, textile heritage, institutional memory, and urban history. Notable collections include: the Josephine Powell Slide Collection (over 30,000 photographs of Anatolian rural life, 1974–1994); the Koç University Manuscripts Collection (697 works in 344 volumes covering Turkish poetry, law, astronomy, medicine, and more); the Keskin Color Postcard Collection (approximately 10,000 postcards of Turkish cities, 1960–2000); the Vehbi Koç Press Clippings Collection (approximately 12,000 items, 1956–1993); and the Koç University Institutional Repository containing theses and dissertations from 2003 onward. The library also holds approximately 8,000 rare books on Ottoman and European history, literature, and religion.

Access and Usage

The Digital Collections portal is freely accessible at librarydigitalcollections.ku.edu.tr. Material requests require completion of a Library and Archive Material Request Form. The collections hold approximately 94,699 records and are registered with re3data.org.