Transforming the Libraries: Helping Turkey to Create Smart Cities

Abstract

The rise of the knowledge society has allowed humans to transform information into knowledge, and brought innovation of information and communication technology. With digital transformation, libraries not only offer space for learning, working and socializing, but also hold richer content and more advanced functionalities. Based on the services conducted by public libraries and e-municipal information services in Turkey, we want to investigate the digital collaboration services provided by libraries, 81 municipalities, and 30 metropolitan municipalities to show how the range of these services had been changed. In the 1146 public libraries run by the Turkish Ministry of Culture, there are 25.091.212 users during the year 2017– 2018. In this context, we identified that the Turkish Smart City Library System outlined five essential activities in this cyclical process: e-participation information services, e-democracy information services, social e-municipal information services, cultural e-municipal information services, innovative e-municipal information services. The purpose of this research is to contribute to the development of smart city libraries, information services, and their librarians' professional qualifications. The research carried out on the websites of metropolitan municipalities, public libraries and General Directorate of Libraries and Publications in Turkey. In smart cities, the individuals’ rights and responsibilities, e-municipal information services and modern transformations have been found crucial in the development of public library services.