ARIT ISTANBUL REPORT 2006-2007 ANNUAL REPORT July 1, 2006—June 30, 2007 1. HOSTEL A. GUESTS Sixty four scholars stayed at the Institute hostel this past year. Twelve of these guests were ARIT, CAORC or Fulbright fellows, as follows: two ARIT-CAORC grantees, one ARIT- Aegean fellowship grantee, one ARIT-Mellon grantee, one ARIT-BU grantee, two CAORC multicountry grantees, two Fulbright and three Fulbright-Hayes grantees. Reversing the trends of recent years, our hostel facilities were used more by graduate students than by faculty members and staff, and more by ARIT institutional members than by others. ARIT member institutions-------------------------------34 Faculty.................................10 Students...............................24 North American non-member institutions-------------17 Faculty..................................11 Students................................6 Institutions outside North America---------------------13 Faculty..................................7 Students................................6 The faculty and staff to graduate student ratio was as follows: University Faculty and staff-----------------------------28 Graduate students-----------------------------------------36 The institution best represented among the hostel guests was once again the University of Chicago with 6 guests, followed by Princeton and Georgetown with 3 guests each. Scholars from outside North America were affiliated with universities in the following countries: Israel (3), Germany (3), France (3), Great Britain (2), Greece (1), and Turkey (1). At the request of funding agencies, in August 2006 we began asking guests to fill out a hostel evaluation form when they leave. The results, for whatever they may be worth, have been overwhelmingly positive. Out of 40 guests filling out the form for this period, 37 said they found their stay “highly satisfactory”, while 3 found it “satisfactory”. No one wrote that it was “unsatisfactory”. B. INCOME Hostel income this year came to $28,773 This is the second highest income we have ever had, after last year’s record. Once again we had a high number of long term guests, especially over the late winter and spring, and the resulting high average occupancy rate of 72%. Occupancy was particularly high in the period March through May, and lowest in January- February, but there was never a month we had less than 50% occupancy. There were a total of 71 nights during the year when all rooms were full, including almost all of March and May and most of November and December. A list of guests staying at the hostel over the past year is included in the appendices (p. 10). 1 ARIT ISTANBUL REPORT 2006-2007 The following table shows trends in hostel use over the past six years: 2001-2 2002-3 2003- 4 2004- 5 2005-6 2006-7 Total Guests 54 49 53 78 71 64 Faculty 31 28 32 40 39 28 Students, etc 23 21 21 38 32 36 ARIT Inst. 31 20 23 36 35 34 Non ARIT 23 29 30 42 36 30 N. American 40 37 38 61 48 51 Non N. Amer. 14 12 15 17 23 13 Total nights occupancy n.a.. n.a. 1577 1372 1986 1835 Total Income $17,739 $20,043 $23,749 $22,936 $31,719 $28,773 2. LIBRARY A. USAGE Library usage continues at a high rate. We had 737 walk-in users over the last year, just a little lower than the year before, with highest usage by students from Boğaziçi University, followed by Koç University, Istanbul Technical University, and Istanbul University in that order. This is an average of about three visits per day the library was open. As has always been the case, a majority of outside library use was by Turkish scholars, with about 27% by visiting foreign scholars: TOTAL Turkey affiliation visits-------------------------------------------536 Turkish university faculty and staff:-------------------------32 Turkish university students (mostly graduate)-------------493 Independent researchers, journalists, etc--------------------11 TOTAL non-Turkey affiliation visits-------------------------------------201 Faculty and staff------------------------------------------------27 Students (almost entirely graduate)--------------------------160 Independent researchers, journalists, etc--------------------14 The largest single category of user is graduate students from Turkish universities, and over a third of these are from Boğaziçi University, which is nearby, and who come for both the Ottoman and the Byzantine collection, whereas it is the Snipes Collection in particular that draws students from the other major universities and indeed from around the country. These figures are only for outside usage; they do not include use by the scholars residing at the Institute, our most important clientele. 2 ARIT ISTANBUL REPORT 2006-2007 B. COLLECTION Over the year a total of 160 monograph titles and 47 offprints were added to the collection; of the monographs 84 came as gifts and the remaining 76 were purchased. The total number of monograph titles in our library database has now reached 9,000. The total number of journal titles is 264, of which 41 are currently being kept up. The rest have either ceased publishing or are partial runs that we do not keep up. The pamphlet collection consists of 2,150 items, evenly distributed beween Ottoman and Byzantine subjects. C. DLIR AND JSTOR CAORC-sponsored IT projects have brought major improvements to the library over the past few years. First came access over the internet through DLIR, then the scanned journals on MERJ, and most recently this past spring a hook-up to the JSTOR database. While access to JSTOR has not brought in a flood of new users, as I initially thought might be the case, it is heavily used by resident scholars and by our more regular outside users. We intend to continue improvements in IT areas, with access to further on-line resources being planned. D. LIBRARIAN At the same time we will also be investing in upkeep of the basic collection itself. We’ll start by the most obvious--hiring a librarian, beginning in January, 2008. For forty-some years the ARIT Istanbul library has been the responsibility of the Director and his assistant, something they put energy into when they could find the time (and the money) between other responsibilities. Now, with the growth of the library--around 13,000 volumes now--and of library usage, with the extra IT resources, and the time necessary to maintain them, and with the growth in other demands on the Director’s time, the time and energy to keep the library up even in this style just isn’t there. It has begun to show in routine upkeep matters—binding, labelling, inventory and regular re-shelving—which are no longer adequately pursued. We hope that with a new librarian we will not only be able to stay on top of routine upkeep, but more importantly that we will be able to improve other aspects of its operation, providing for the first time limited reference service, expert maintenance and expansion of our IT resources, a more deliberate and rational acquisitions policy, and the possibility of collaborative interaction with other libraries in the city. Generous donations of books keep our library going, and have made it the invaluable resource it is. For this ARIT and all its users are tremendously grateful. I wish therefore to express a very warm thanks to the individuals and institutions who have donated to the library over the past year, and to encourage the ARIT Board and delegates to continue in their good efforts to solicit donations for our collection. A list of this year’s library donors is attached to this report. (p. 12) 3. LECTURES The Institute hosted a total of twelve lectures over the course of the year. The lecture season ran from late October to mid-December in the fall, and from late April to early July in the spring. All lectures were held on Monday nights at either 6:30 p.m. or 7:00 p.m. in the H. Kenneth Snipes Byzantine Studies Collection room, followed by receptions held one floor below in the main library room. Notifications of all lectures were sent to the other foreign institutes, to the Friends, to Dernek members, and to a mailing list of around 250 persons, mostly academics, in the Istanbul area. Attendance at lectures varied from a low of 15 to a high of about 50 persons. 3 ARIT ISTANBUL REPORT 2006-2007 Fall Lectures Gail Dexter Lord, President, Lord Cultural Resources Management, Ontario, “The Museum as a Civic Institution” Elâ Kaçel, PhD Candidate in Architectural History and Theory, Cornell University, “Information or Culture: The Intelligentsia and the Dissemination of Postwar Modernism in Turkey” Jeremy Walton, Dept. of Anthropology, University of Chicago “Civil Devotion in Secular Space: Considering Turkey's Islamically-Oriented Vakıfs” Amy Singer, Dept. of Middle Eastern & African History, Tel Aviv University, Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations, Koç University “Free Lunches and Philanthropy in the Ottoman Empire” İpek K. Yosmaoğlu, Dept. of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison "A Leap of Faith: The Nationalization of Religion in Ottoman Macedonia at the turn of the Twentieth Century" Eliot Bates, Ethnomusicology, UC Berkeley "Ethnic and Musical Aspects and Consequences of Pan-Karadeniz Popular Music" Spring Lectures Heath Lowry, Ottoman and Modern Turkish Studies, Princeton University “In the Footsteps of Haci Evrenos: a Re-interpretation of the Ottoman Conquest of Western Thrace” John Curry, History Dept., University of Nevada “Insights on Provincial Ottoman Social and Cultural Life as Reflected in Sufi Manuscript Writings: the Sha’baniyye order in Kastamonu” David Katz, History Department, Tel Aviv University, and Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations, Koç University “Saving Lives, Collapsing Civilizations: Arnold Toynbee in the Turkish War of Independence” Paul Magdalino, History Dept., University of St. Andrews, and History Dept., Koç University “Political Prophecy and Divination in 12th Century Byzantium” Victor Ostapchuk, History Dept., University of Toronto “The Spade, GPS, and the Defter as Tools in the Study of the Ottoman Black Sea Frontier Fortress of Akkerman” George Gawrych, History Dept., Baylor University “Women in the Thought of Şemseddin Sami” 4 ARIT ISTANBUL REPORT 2006-2007 4.