The European Commission, which is the official representative of the European Community, has made Bilkent Library a full European Documentation Center (EDC). Bilkent qualified as an EDC because it is a leading teaching and research institution whose faculty members influence policy making and shape public opinion in the country. The faculty has been competitive in areas such as European studies, Turkey and European Union relations, and European security, enabling them to offer courses in European studies both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The fact that many Bilkent students’ masters’ theses and Ph.D. dissertations have focused on European studies also influenced the Commission’s decision.
The European Commission will supply the Bilkent Library with a complete range of publications of the European Union institutions. The library will receive a monthly list of all material distributed by the European Union, and it will have privileged access to the European Community databases. The collection will be housed in the Main Campus Library with the U.S. Government documents. The hours will be Monday through Friday, from 9-12:30 p.m. and 1-5:30 p.m. The librarian in charge will be Hande Özel.
Bilkent’s objective as an EDC is to help the university promote and consolidate teaching and research in the field of European integration, and to make information on the European Union and its policies available to the public. With Turkey’s candidacy in the EU, the Bilkent EDC will be an important center for the dissemination of information on the EU, thus raising public awareness in Turkey about the EU and Turkish-European Union relations.
The following websites contain links to full EU documentation listings as well as listings of other EDCs. The University of Mannheim offers a list of EDCs with websites. The site is in German, but the links are not. Go to
http://www.uni-mannheim.de/users/ddz/edz/eu_info/adr/wwwedz.html. The University of California, Berkeley Library is also an EDC. Its English language website is
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/GSSI/eu.html#edc. For further details about the Bilkent EDC contact Hande Özer at
ext. 2530 or send e-mail to edc@bilkent.edu.tr.
