The Non-Governmental Organizations and Associations in Field of Information and Document Management in Turkey

Abstract

The non-governmental organizations are societal organizations that stem from various societal groups’ and units’ prompts to act together to achieve common goals. The non-governmental organizations create an important mechanism that reflects the degree of activities of societal groups (especially the professional groups) and this mechanism should be decisive in the decisions and practices of the profession. Professional associations have a great role in the development of a profession, the imposition of this profession on the society, the creation of professional standards and the participation in the provision of top-level decisions. Information and Document Management is a discipline, based on the teaching of theories, methods and the techniques which provide the flow of registered information in all societal fields and which ensure the provision of information services, within the process of this flow, in libraries and information centers by the help of contemporary standards. The non-governmental organizations and associations founded in the field of Information and Document Management in Turkey aim at creating solutions to the problems of the profession, introducing all segments of the society to the profession, imposing the profession on the society, and to make this field of profession really professional and really expert. The aim of this study is to examine the development processes and present sitautions of the non-governmental organizations and the professional associations which have been founded in the field of librarianship in Turkey. Within this context, firstly the basic concepts related to the subject and the concepts related to the non-governmental society will be evaluated. And secondly, the professional associations which provide services in the field of librarianship in Turkey will be taken into consideration. To achieve the aim of this study; Turkish Librarians’ Association, Association of University and Research Librarians, Turkish Association of School Libraries and Balkan Libraries Union, which are important non-governmental organizations in the field of librarianship will be examined in terms of their establishment processes, their goals and their missions, their activity fields and the difficulties they encounter.