Educational Gains of Digital Transformation in Academic Libraries: The Case of Istanbul University’s DijitalKütüpİST Project

In an era of uncertain information explosion and accessible media, libraries worldwide have rapidly embraced the digitization of their resources to develop a survival mechanism and support education by increasing relevance. To meet the ever-changing needs of researchers and remain relevant in the 21st century, academic libraries have had to take on new roles. As cultural memory institutions, libraries have had to improve their infrastructure in line with the developments in information technologies to provide information resources following the needs and expectations of researchers, to support education, and to ensure that their collections can be used by future generations. This has led to the need to transfer existing printed resources to readable formats and/or media through communication technologies. In this framework, the study discusses the contribution of digitization projects, which have increased in academic libraries in parallel with digital transformation processes, to education. The Istanbul University “Istanbul Cultural Heritage Digital Library (DijitalKütüpİST)” project is briefly described as an example of information access services in new-generation libraries. In conclusion, this paper highlights the contributions that university libraries make to scientific research and education through digitalization and enhanced information access, by analyzing the researcher profiles and quantitative data from the DijitalKütüpİST Project, which digitally connects cultural heritage works of historical significance with researchers.