Ahmet Behaeddin Seminar Room Collections:EMU administration does not encourage seminar libraries in the faculties with an idea to keep security over the books and enlarge the collections of its main library. However, due to a meaningful bequeath made by Mrs. Tülin Behaeddin, the wife of Mr. Ahmet Behaeddin who was the first Turkish Cypriot architect that had his university education in Istanbul Technical University and rendered several modernist architectural projects, after his death, the faculty opened a small seminar room first in the ground floor of the office building. This bequeath includes some books, very valuable scientific architectural journals printed in 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, his personal documents and his drawing tables and instruments. The printed materials are in English, French and German. Some of these books are indexed while some of them in German language and Turkish books which are mainly fictions are still not indexed.
Soon after, one of our ex-staff, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Üstün Alsaç, donated his father's books to the library. The collection of Prof. Dr. Orhan Alsaç, a well- known professor from Istanbul Technical University, contains several architecture and architecture history books as well as several valuable documents, reports etc. performed in his career. The collection consists of Turkish, English and French books.
Collection of books and journals in the possession of Assist. Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Ateşin, one of our deceased staff, who was also the founding member of the Department of Architecture, was donated by his family after his death to the Faculty. These books and journals were indexed in his room before being carried to the library by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Netice Yıldız. The collection consists of Turkish and English books and also journals.
A noteworthy number of books were also donated by one of our academic staff, Prof. Dr. İbrahim Numan, who also gave valuable services to the Department of Architecture as Chair and Dean of the Faculty in the past. The collection consists of Turkish and English books as well as some journals.
The books are indexed as group of collections like, FA.behaeddin.1; FA.Ateşin1; FA.Alsaç.1; FA.Numan.1 while the journals are grouped as faculty collection. However, the other books are indexed according to Dewey system.
Also, the faculty keeps the graduate students' thesis as a collection in the seminar room and they are indexed and labelled (See attachment for the list of the thesis available).
There are also some photographs obtained from students' term papers mainly taken in historical sites of Cyprus and some posters or calendar pictures about important historical buildings donated by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Netice Yıldız.
Since its foundation, Ahmet Behaeddin Seminar room gets new donations from time to time which are indexed as Faculty books in Dewey numeral system. A recent collection of 17 boxes of architectural journals donated by an architect from UK and arrived in July 2014 are also boxed and indexed. Some journals that are sent regularly by the publishers to the Deanship and Departments are also added to the collection.
Recently, we changed the faculty collection indexing system and Dewey system is taken into consideration. Each book is catalogued and labelled according to this system. However, since we do not have a professional librarian, this process is done by our library coordinator and the small team of student assistants (three or four every semester) whenever the time is available. Since the library is running with the help of assistants and a coordinator, there are some problems to keep control over the collection's security. Thus, some materials are lost from time to time.
Function of the Ahmet Vural Behaeddin Seminar Room as a Reading Room:
This space was used for multipurpose in the past for seminars and graduate courses. Nowadays it is used only as a reading room and reference library. Thus, it is not lending out any material.
The collection was transported from the Faculty Administrative Building to Ar - A-20 (second floor of the Coloured Building in 2002/3 and then it was moved to AR-A 03 in the same building. Inevitably transportation of the collection created so much problem and some of the collections are mixed up.
The seminar room has been developed into a reading hall during the last five years and it is kept open during the working hours by the assistants appointed every semester. Three or four assistants keep the room running since they were given study areas in the hall. So, during the last couple of years, the library is sometimes kept open until late hours of the evening or during summer period (the assistants are not paid during summer), based on volunteer works of the staff.
The Faculty students, graduate students and staff could study in the reading room. The majority of the readers are the graduate students who spent most of their leisure time studying here. Each visitor is asked to sign the book and also, whenever they are handed down a thesis for reading in the hall.
Self-Assessment of the Faculty and Departmental Archives:
Lack of enough space in the faculty and budget and a professional librarian or archivist created a slow process for the indexing of the available sources of the faculty. Since the assistants keep changing continuously and the lack of ISBN numbers of some of the books due to their earlier publication dates and also lack of knowledge about the professional library cataloguing systems, as well as the demand by the donators to keep the collections in separate shelves under their names were some reasons for not being able to achieve the intended aim of putting the list of books and journals into a union catalogue system and install information on the web site for the use of the readers. We believe that there are some rare books in this collection which could create an international readership service for researchers.
Although we have a rather rich journals and magazines collections related to architecture, urban planning, interior architecture and arts, it is only these books which do not two years that we managed to organise them in a better way in some standard archive boxes. This is done with a small budget obtained by selling extra copies of books and journals at lower prices at few occasions.
However, the seminar room is important to our students and faculty staffs to enable their approach to the thesis performed in our graduate studies and give a quiet and relaxed space to the readers. The room is partially renovated recently by changing the shelves and curtains. But it still needs further renovations, particularly renewing sitting elements and better organisation of the space with an available budget to be allocated either through donations or by the university and enlarging the space with the next door office and part of the corridor.
The room was first coordinated by Assoc. Prof.Dr.Üstün Alsaç and then by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Netice Yıldız (at least now 10 years).
