Women’s Library and Information Center Foundation

The Women’s Library and Information Center Foundation was established on March 8, 1990, with the aim of “knowing the past of women well, presenting this information to researchers in an organized manner and preserving today’s written documents for future generations,” as stated in its founding letter. On April 14 of the same year, it was opened in a historical building in the Golden Horn-Fener district of Istanbul. Being Turkey’s first and only women-centered archive and library, The Foundation is an important institution in that its collections contain works and documents belonging to or related to women in Turkey from the Ottoman period to the present. In the foundation there are 16 collections under the titles of Special Archives, Women’s Organizations, Ephemera, Newspaper Clippings, Posters, Visuals, Rare Works, Oral History, Books, Periodicals, Theses, Articles, Art Works, Women Writers, Women Artists and Auditory. The Foundation provides important private archives and collections within the framework of its efforts to provide, protect and make available, makes new arrangements in order to present these archives and collections to readers and researchers in a more contemporary order, and continues digitization studies to accelerate and facilitate access. The stage that the Women’s Works Library and Information Center Foundation has reached since 1990 is the result of the interest in this subject and the efforts of hundreds of people who have offered their time, effort and financial opportunities to this work.