Creative information services at the public libraries of Istanbul

Today, when the library using habits decrease day by day, public libraries need to adapt to daily shifting conditions in order to reach their aims and continue their existences. If public libraries could foresee the changes and start them, they would be the Avant-garde institutions of their societies. Within this context, it is very important for public library staff, particularly the executors and librarians, to generate innovation by uncovering their creative energies. Defined as the producing originality in a field, creativity exists in every person and is a perfectible feature. It is possible to say that the individual, organization and society to be beneficial by treating the created innovations and converting them into society’s benefit. Undoubtedly, it can be provided via public libraries’ creative, innovative and entrepreneur organizational structure and operation. In this study, creativity is analyzed by searching answers for the question why public libraries should canalize to creative services. Additionally, by addressing to Istanbul’s situation, examples of the creative information services held at the public libraries of Istanbul is presented

Teachers of action: a narrative study into the Identities of Turkish teachers of English

This narrative study explores the identities of Turkish teachers of English, who engage in volunteering activities in addition to their everyday teaching. These activities include writing local and international development projects for students and communities, spending an entire summer holiday to volunteer in an orphanage in Africa, running an amateur football club for the community, voluntarily tutoring for the economically disadvantaged kids for free, and volunteering in health-related organisations. Being a Middle Eastern country between Asia and Europe, the Turkish context seems to constrain than to support the teachers to engage in volunteering for others, especially in addition to their everyday teaching duties. In this vein, with accountability and standards they enforce, neoliberal trends affect education negatively. Additionally, it is difficult to define the engagement of these teachers within the current literature, as teacher volunteering does not capture what they do, making it necessary to gaze towards teacher activism. Yet, activism, especially in the Turkish context, has different connotations. Hence, while there are already limited studies on the identities of international teachers of English, this study enriches the existing literature around the topic by bringing a unique perspective, identifying the similarities and differences between teacher volunteering and teacher activism as well as offering an additional discourse to teacher activism. Through two in-depth interviews each with five Turkish teachers of English that are analysed narratively, participants’ discussions around activism and volunteering led to the construction of a ‘teacher of action’ concept. Teacher of action recognises the participant teachers’ authentic ways of engaging in volunteering, taking action for others as well as encompassing teacher activism and volunteering. Some teachers in this study choose to see teaching as a political act. Others deliberately refrain from politics to carry out their agendas, whether they have ideas on politics and activism or not. Their engagements are a combination of their personal and professional identities and values, which affect and, were affected by, their actions. In this regard, taking action eventually becomes a stance for them, which informs their behaviours and actions in their personal and professional lives. Taking action as a stance, they are not only active in organised projects but also their everyday teaching, through big and small acts. Moreover, they do not limit themselves to the spheres of school and education, as their engagements are not limited to these spaces, while all affect their professional identities. What they have in common is their beliefs in the transformative power of education and urge to take action to make that transformation more possible, which affects and reconstructs their personal and professional identities. The study demonstrates that taking action can be possible for all teachers and has various benefits for teachers’ identities as well as their motivation in teaching, as it is driven by their beliefs in the transformative power of education, the values they hold about teaching, as well as their care for their students, families, communities and others

Creative Information Services At The Public Libraries of Istanbul

Today, when the library using habits decrease day by day, public libraries need to adapt to daily shifting conditions in order to reach their aims and continue their existences. If public libraries could foresee the changes and start them, they would be the Avant-garde institutions of their societies. Within this context, it is very important for public library staff, particularly the executors and librarians, to generate innovation by uncovering their creative energies. Defined as the producing originality in a field, creativity exists in every person and is a perfectible feature. It is possible to say that the individual, organization and society to be beneficial by treating the created innovations and converting them into society’s benefit. Undoubtedly, it can be provided via public libraries’ creative, innovative and entrepreneur organizational structure and operation. In this study, creativity is analyzed by searching answers for the question why public libraries should canalize to creative services. Additionally, by addressing to Istanbul’s situation, examples of the creative information services held at the public libraries of Istanbul is presente

The Role of the Libraries in the Information Society

After the transition to the information society, our world is in a fast and massive transformation in social, cultural, political and economical terms. This transformation process affects almost all organizational structures. One of the structures that is affected of this process is the library with its culturally and socially organizational characteristics as they collect, preserve and serve the information; spot the information as the focus and eventually aim to meet the information needs of the society. The aim of this study is to examine the information society fact as well as determining the effects of the transition to the information society on the libraries and to give information of the status of the libraries in the information society