News

On September 12, the head of the Turkish language department of Ghent University, Belgium, prof. dr. Johan Vandevalle visited the National Library. The director of the National Library, professor Karim Tahirov, received the guests and said that he was glad to see them in the library. The Director gave general information about the library to the guests and said that the National Library of Azerbaijan is the richest library in the country and creates an archive fund of Azerbaijani books and press and delivers it to future generations.

He gave  a broad information to the guests about the fund of the National Library, the number of readers, the automation processes implemented in the library, the online services of the National Library during the pandemic, as well as international projects. He said that the National Library of Azerbaijan cooperates with about 60 libraries of the world. Among these libraries, university libraries have a special place. Speaking about the contracts signed with Berlin Humboldt University and Los Angeles University of California, he said that the National Library of Azerbaijan exchanges books with those universities. The director also emphasized that he believes that one such contract will be signed with Ghent University in the future. K. Tahirov told the guests about his visit to Belgium last year and his meeting with Sara Lammens, director of the Royal Library of Belgium, in connection with the participation in the CENL annual meeting. He said that it is planned to sign an agreement on mutual cooperation between the National Library of Azerbaijan and the Royal Library of Belgium at the 8th Baku International Book Fair to be held in Baku in October this year.

Then the head of the Turkish language department of Ghent University, Belgium, prof. dr. Johann Vandevalle first gave information about Ghent University. He noted that Ghent is one of the largest universities in Belgium. 12 faculties operate in the university with 56,000 students. The fund of the university library is more than 3 million. The university has departments in 8 languages - Dutch, French, German, English, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Turkish. He said that the Institute of Oriental Languages and Culture, which he established in 1994, was the first institution teaching the Turkish language in Belgium.Since 2006, the Turkish language department has been established at Ghent University. He stated that the Turkish language department needs language teaching grammar books, language dictionaries, and explanatory dictionaries for the teaching of Azerbaijani and Turkish languages, and asked the director to provide assistance in this regard.

Later, Karim Tahirov informed the guests about the International Cooperation hall of the library and said that the hall exhibits literature dedicated to the literature, history, art, geography, etc. of 16 countries.

I believe that after the memorandum to be signed with the Royal Library of Belgium, Belgian literature will take its rightful place in that corner.

At the end of the meeting, prof. Karim Tahirov presented the guests with the books "Azerbaijan National Library: photo album", "Azerbaijani carpets in world collections", "Hello Azerbaijan", a map of Azerbaijan and presented the "Maiden Castle" souvenir to the guests.

At the end, the guests got acquainted with the National Library. They took a commemorative photo in the "Heydar Aliyev Corner", "Hall of International Cooperation", "Rare Books and Library Museum" sections of the library and got acquainted with the library fund.