Every year, typically during the last week of March, Turkey celebrates the role of libraries and librarians in society. This year’s National Library Week, the 58th to take place, will run from March 28 through April 2.
The theme for the 2022 event, “Truth and Libraries,” promotes the idea that libraries can help individuals locate, evaluate and use information effectively in today’s “post-truth” environment. This puts libraries at the heart of the response to the challenge, as they strive to equip library users with the media and information-literacy skills to navigate the digital information ecosystem more confidently.
The Bilkent University Library is celebrating National Library Week in cooperation with the Turkish Librarians’ Association and will host a number of webinars, talks and other events, to which all members of the Bilkent community are invited.
On Monday, March 28, at 11:30 a.m. International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions President Barbara Lison will give a talk at the Goethe Institut in downtown Ankara to open the week.
On Tuesday, March 29 at 11 a.m., the Bilkent Library will host a webinar by Özgür Mumcu and Eray Özer of the “Yeni Haller” podcast. The session will explore the process of creating content for open-access podcasts, touching on such aspects as research methodology, audience engagement and the podcasters’ desire to share information about topics important to them. 
“Bring Your Book, Let’s Read Together” will take place on Wednesday, March 30 at 12:30 p.m., on the lawn between the Main Campus Library and the Rectorate building. This group reading activity has become an annual tradition, with Bilkent students, faculty and staff members gathering on the lawn, each bringing their own book to enjoy.
On Thursday, March 31, in conjunction with the Bilkent Library’s international librarian exchange program, a webinar by Dr. Frank Seeliger, library director at the Technical University of Applied Sciences Wildau (Germany), on the topic “Digitization and Libraries: The Impact of the COVID Pandemic, and Lessons Learned” will be livestreamed on the Bilkent University Library YouTube channel at 10 a.m.
The final events of this year’s Library Week program will be held on Friday, April 1 at the Goethe Institut. In keeping with the “Truth and Libraries” theme, a session at 11 a.m. titled “Post-Truth: A New Era of Information Literacy,” will explore how information literacy can be leveraged as an effective tool to empower library users. The speaker will be Müge Yılmaz, a Bilkent University librarian and PhD candidate in the Department of Communication Science at Hacettepe University. Then, at 2 p.m., a “Library Week Evaluation Meeting” moderated by Dr. Ebru Kaya, director of the Bilkent University Library, will focus on assessing this year’s Library Week.
The Bilkent Library invites everyone to join them for the Library Week events, and reminds readers to follow the library on social media in order to keep up to date with the latest news and events.