{"id":3329,"date":"2021-11-09T09:15:58","date_gmt":"2021-11-09T14:15:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/islamicstudieslibrary\/?p=3329"},"modified":"2021-11-17T08:38:48","modified_gmt":"2021-11-17T13:38:48","slug":"wikilala","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/islamicstudieslibrary\/wikilala\/","title":{"rendered":"Wikilala: an Ottoman digital library"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Started in 2019, Wikilala<\/a> is a digital library making available and full-text searchable documents printed between 1729, when Ibrahim M\u00fcteferriqa founded the first Turkish printing Press and the letter revolution in 1928. The project was launched by Hiperlink<\/a>‘s (first Turkish digital library) project manager, Sadi \u00d6zg\u00fcr, and an academic member at the History Department of Istanbul Ayd\u0131n University that acted as a consultant, Harun Tuncer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wikilala aims <\/strong>“to enable researchers and enthusiasts studying in almost all branches of science, such as culture, ar<\/strong>t, history, literature, architecture etc. to rediscover even the smallest details in order to illuminate a landscape that has been dimly lighted for two centuries. (\u2026) Wikilala allows (\u2026) to access this huge storage of knowledge.”<\/strong><\/em><\/p>“About” page<\/em>, Wikilala (URL:https:\/\/www.wikilala.com\/about<\/a>) <\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

According to the description on the “About” page, Wikilala <\/a>includes thousands of books, magazines, journals, newspapers,etc. that have been digitized in high-resolution, catalogued, and OCR’ed (i.e. O<\/strong>ptical R<\/strong>ecognition C<\/strong>haracter) to allow for full-text searchability. The project also include the “latinization” of texts to allow people who don’t have command of Ottoman Turkish to search the texts in Latin script.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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To access Wikilala materials, visitors need to create an account (which is free with an institutional email). Once logged-in, the entire library becomes available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the main page (captured above), users can search the library in Latin or Arabic scripts (thanks to a handy multilingual and multialphabets virtual keyboard), or pre-select the type of documents they want to search\/read: Newspapers<\/a>, Journals<\/a>, Books<\/a>, Manuscripts <\/a>and Documents<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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