The History / General Information

The department was founded with the name "Department of Librarianship" in 1963 and began that teaching in the academic year 1964-1965. It is the second department opened in the field of librarianship after the Librarianship Department of Ankara University Faculty of Language, History and Geography.

The department's founder and the first head was Professor Dr. Rudolf Juchhoff who was invited for this purpose from Germany and an international fame in the library field. Meral (Şenöz) Alpay worked as his interpreter and Jale Baysal worked as his teaching assistant. The department, living major difficulties about lack of academic staff because of the death of Prof. Dr. Juchhof in 1968, was able to continue its activities with the support of faculty members from other departments. The first members having doctoral degrees were Meral Alpay and Jale Baysal in the department. They reached associate professors and professors in their academic career and contributed to the development of the department. After Professor Juchhoff, Professor Dr. Jala Baysal (1974-1994), Professor Dr. Meral Alpay (1994-1997), Professor Dr. Aysel Yontar (1997-2004) were the head of the department. Professor Dr. Ayse Üstün conducted the head of the Department from 2004-2008. Professor Dr. Mehmet Canatar has been the head of the department since 2008.

The department, opening master program in 1983, doctoral program in 1984, started to publish a scientific journal named " Librarianship Journal: Document-Information-Library Studies" in 1987. Librarianship Department was organized with two departments which are "Librarianship" and "Documentation and Information"; the evening education program was opened in the Librarianship Department in 1995. Changes that affect individual and social life in the Information Age have led to new regulations, organization and conversions in all academic disciplines; it also has created new disciplines such as 'information science', 'knowledge management'. Library and archival sciences are also affected by these developments on a large scale; the notion of “library and information science” has emerged. All these developments are important for restructuring of information organizations such as library, information center and achieve which especially based on usage of information technology in terms of sources, services and management. Today, there are important changes in the departments’ names and syllabus which operates in the name of “librarianship school / department”

As a result of these developments, the names of Librarianship / LIS Departments, with our department Ankara, Hacettepe and Başkent Universities’ departments, were changed as “Information and Records Management Department” by the decision of Higher Education Council in 2002.

On the other hand, İstanbul University School of Archival Department has ceased to new student intake in 2002-2003. It was included to “Information and Records  Management Department” in accordance with the Higher Education Council decision above in 2002-2003.

After Archival, Librarianship and Documentation Department were combined as one department, our department, enriching its teaching staffs, has renewed its syllabus.