Research Centre for Islamic History, Art and Culture (IRCICA), Istanbul
IRCICA is an international institution active in the fields of research, publishing, documentation and information. Its mandate covers multifarious themes in the fields of the history of Muslim nations, history of arts and sciences in Islam, and other subject areas in Islamic culture and civilisation. By means of these activities, IRCICA aims at studying and better introducing the Islamic culture and civilisation throughout the world and acting as a catalyst for research and cooperation in these areas to promote mutual understanding between Muslims and with other nations and cultures of the world.
IRCICA started its activities in 1980 as the first subsidiary organ of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) concerned with culture. The headquarters of IRCICA are located in the three buildings named Seyir Pavilion, Cit Qasr and Yaveran Building in the historical Yildiz Palace in Besiktas, Istanbul. These buildings were allocated to the Centre by the Government of the Republic of Turkey.
IRCICA Library is one of the renowned special libraries in its field in the world. The selected and impressive collection of the library that consists of approximately 300.000 headings in 138 languages is placed on shelves of 3000 m. long. The collection includes the following: 60.000 books and rare works, 1460 titles of periodicals, 186 manuscripts, 1000 maps, 4000 offprints, 4000 grey literature, 300 microfilms and microfiches, photograph archives consisting of 70.000 historical photographs, OMETAR Archives comprising 150.000 items, IRCICA Activities Archives comprising 2580 documents, and Bammate Archives including 2150 documents.
The collection of the library consists of books on Islamic history, art, literature, science, culture and Muslim countries. The collection primarily includes the encyclopedias, dictionaries, bibliographies, catalogues, biographic works, and guide books within the Center´s field of interest. The collection comprises books in approximately 138 languages. These are mainly English, Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Ottoman Turkish, French, Urdu, German, Spanish, Russian, Italian, Malay, Indonesian, Hungarian and other languages. The holdings of the library are enriched mostly by exchange (an active exchange program is carried out with 64 countries and 418 institutions), purchases and the donation of personal collections to the Centre by private parties.
The Center´s library has a collection of 60.000 volumes. Reference books, selected in line with the objectives and projects of IRCICA, as mentioned in its main statute, constitute the nucleus of the collection. Special care is given to the acquisition of encyclopedias, dictionaries, library catalogues, general and subject bibliographies, and works about indexes. There are also some rare printed works and incunabula in the collection. Among them are those books printed by İbrahim Müteferrika and some rare books in Ottoman Turkish. The collection also consists of the first Quran printed in Latin and rare books in western languages published in Europe. Particularly printed books are selected for the collection. However, although rarely, we have included in our collection those manuscript books, which appear in some donations or which are donated directly to the library.
Yildiz Sarayi, Seyir Kosku
Barbaros Bulvari, Besiktas 34349
Istanbul, Turkey
Telephone +90 212 259 17 42
Fax +90 212 258 43 65
E-mail ircica@ircica.org
Source: http://www.ircica.org/
