ISTANBUL
Libraries across Turkey cataloged 75.6 million books by the end of 2020, up from 72 million a year ago, the country's statistical authority said Tuesday.
TurkStat said there are 33,978 libraries in the country -- including one National Library, 606 university libraries, 1,213 public libraries, and 32,158 formal and non-formal education libraries.
The number of registered members was 125,935 in the National Library, 4.44 million in public libraries, and 3.56 million in education libraries.
The National Library has 1.47 million books, up 5.1% year-on-year, with 188,902 miscellaneous reading material.
The number of public libraries was up 2.6% over the same period, while the number of books in them increased by 1.8% to reach 21.12 million.
"There are libraries in 197 universities, 125 of which are state universities and 72 are foundation universities," TurkStat said.
While the number of university libraries dropped in 2020, the number of books in these libraries increased by 3.4% to 18.55 million.
"The number of e-books decreased by 1% in 2020 -- compared to 2019 -- to reach 97.34 million in 2020," it added.
