Undoubtedly, books are the most important means of conveying knowledge and culture to people. The level of civilization of a nation is directly related to the rate of reading books. The importance given to books and libraries by all the states that have contributed to civilization and civilization in history is obvious. This is also the case today. When we look at developed countries, we see that the number of people who read books is higher and the number of books per person is higher. The American Library of Congress, the largest library in the United States, which has more than half of the world's science and has the largest economy in the world, has about 30 million volumes. This number is around 18 million at Harvard University. Considering that there are about 13 million books in the libraries of our country's universities, the total number of books can not even reach the number of books at Harvard University.
Our university is making big investments in almost all fields in our libraries as well. In our university, all kinds of requests for book purchases from our instructors in our units are taken into consideration at the moment and all of them are tried to be taken as much as possible. Intensive studies are underway to improve the library infrastructure. In this context, the University Library of the Central Library continues to grow and develop rapidly in terms of both the number of electronic / printed resources, the variety of access and the services offered to its users.
Procedure Catalog Automation System is used to access resources in our library. All catalogs and publications in our library can be accessed electronically via the procedure system. With the agreements made with institutions between Interlibrary Cooperation and Tracking System (KITS) and Turkey's Information and Document Delivery System (TÜBESS) aiming to follow the resource sharing process between libraries / information centers of higher education institutions online, resources which are not at our university are provided by other university libraries in Turkey.
The number of library resources in our university libraries is increasing day by day. The number of printed publications, which was 55,876 in 2011, reached 88,866 in 2015 and reached 96,851 at the end of 2017 with an increase of 73%.
One of the most effective ways to access the most efficient database from the easiest and most economical way is through the rapid development of information technology. Access to databases in terms of academic work is of great importance. Our university, which is aware of this, has realized an increase of 104% in this issue by increasing the number of databases from 26 in 2011 to 50 in 2015 and to 53 in 2017 in the direction of requests from our lecturers. Electronic resources in our university libraries and subscribed databases can be accessed via http://kutuphane.hitit.edu.tr/ web page on campus connected computers. Printed or electronic, maps, CD / DVD and so on. material resource requests are available in a shorter time with "Electronic Resource Demand System" online.
In addition, the number of e-books, which was only 52,722 in 2011, reached 284,678 in 2015 and 581,305 in 2017. In addition to electronic books, there has also been an increase in e-journals and the number of e-journals, which was 25,624 in 2011, reached 41,461 in 2015 and 75,056 in 2017. Thus, by the end of 2017, the number of electronic publications reached 656.361.
The periodicals in our university library have increased continuously as they are in other publications. The number of periodical publications, 404 in 2011, reached 764 in 2015 and 1.179 in 2017. As a result, there was a 192% increase in the periodicals.
