The Boğaziçi University Library Rare Books and Historical Archives Branch Directorate contains approximately 30 thousand rare books of different types and institutional and private archive collections donated to Boğaziçi University or acquired by the university.
The rare books collection contains approximately 30 thousand works of different types from the 16th century to the 20th century. The foundation of the collection is based on the Robert College library. Cyrus Hamlin, the founder and first director of Robert College, mentions in his memoirs that Harvard University Law School donated 200 valuable books on the occasion of the establishment of the College. These donations and other books collected during that period were the first works that formed the foundation of the Robert College library. The library collection has been enriched over time and has become one of the important libraries of the period.
When Robert College was transferred to the Turkish Government in 1971, the rare books collection was taken over along with all the library collections. The collection has continued to be enriched with new donations since the establishment of Boğaziçi University.
The archive collections within the Boğaziçi University Library Rare Works and Historical Archives Branch Directorate include institutional archive and special collection materials donated to Boğaziçi University or acquired by the university. While the archive collections and studies on them were carried out scattered within various academic departments, they were first brought together under one roof under the management of Prof. Dr. Cengiz Kırlı in 2015 with the allocation of the building known as Barnum House or No. 8 Lojman as the Archive Center. The project titled “History of Science, Culture and Education in Istanbul with Personal Archives” prepared here was supported by the “Innovative and Creative Istanbul Financial Support Program” of the Istanbul Development Agency. Within the scope of the project carried out between December 15, 2016 and December 14, 2017, the classification and digitization works of the Jale İnan, Aziz Ogan, İsmayil Hakkı Baltacıoğlu and Feza Gürsey archives were completed, the rough classifications of the Robert College and American Girls' College Digital Archives were uploaded to the system, and some of the architectural structure photographs of the Aptullah Kuran Archive and the Scott Family Collection diaries were classified, digitized and made accessible via the web. The collections in the Archive Center were transferred to the Library and Documentation Department in 2022. Here, as of March 2023, under the consultancy of our History Department faculty member Prof. Dr. Çiğdem Kafescioğlu, 6802 photographs, 974 plans and 1811 documents related to them in six drawers containing architectural structure photographs of the Aptullah Kuran Archive were classified by our graduate student Münevver Özdemir and the digitization processes were completed by the library staff. With the establishment of the Rare Works and Historical Archives Branch Directorate in March 2024, the classification and digitization processes of archive materials have accelerated. 75 boxes of materials containing other documents belonging to the Abdullah Quran Collection have been cleaned and their rough classification processes have been completed. The digitization and classification works of the material are ongoing.
Special Archive Collections in the Rare Books and Historical Archives Branch Office:
Adalet Ağaoğlu Collection
Aptullah Kuran Archive
Aziz Ogan Archive
Feza Gürsey Archive (Physically located in the Physics Department)
Ismayıl Hakkı Baltacıoğlu Archive
Jale İnan Archive
Leyla Erbil Archive (Physically located in the Nazım Hikmet Cultural Center)
Melih Rauf Esenbel Archive
Robert College and American Girls College Digital Archive
Scott Family Collection
Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu, Ayşe Leman Karaosmanoğlu and Burhan Belge Archive
