Being the de facto founder of the Department of Archives Administration at Marmara University, I had to take care of its public relations right from the beginning. I have accomplished several tasks with this aim.
I have organized several conferences by prominent archivists from the Western world. The aim in these were threefold: To promote the Department in the academic world; create an interest in the profession and thereby attract better students and create a market for their recruitment upon their graduation; and broaden the vision of the students.
The speakers in these conferences were:
The first of these conferences were sponsored by the French Attachée Culturelle and the second one by the British Council in Istanbul. The third speaker was invited by Marmara University. I had taken an active part in arranging the sponsors for, and accommodation, subsistence and city tours of the first two speakers. The last speaker had been a staff member of the Department in the years from October 1990 to July 1993.
I gave the proceedings of these conferences to a colleague at our Department and he published them in Arsivcilik Konferanslari -I-. Ed. Hamza Kandur. Istanbul: Marmara University Centre for Archives and Records Management Studies, 1995. IX + 102. ISBN 975-7148-02-4. I financed and organized the publication of this book personally, together with four other books. (See the section on "Publishing" for detailed information about this.)
As can be seen under the "Research" section, a great deal of my articles aim to promote the archives and records management profession. I have used these articles, as well as little brochures I have prepared for this purpose, to promote our profession and our Department to the top industrialists in Turkey by sending them letters towards the end of each academic year for the first three graduating classes.
In the years to follow, I took a different approach and started calling the owners of advertisements looking for staff to do archival work. This way I had a chance to do the same promotion directly to the targeted audience; thus eliminating non-professionals who might apply to the ad, recruiting the best graduates and negotiating better salaries. This approach proved quite successful.
Part of this success, at least in the later years, was due to the fact that I was sending staff from my own team at the Yapi Kredi Bank's Archives Museum project. This was the surest way of keeping the Department's prestige at the highest level, and providing the best hands on experience to the next group of promising candidates.
Yet, to make sure this idea worked in practice, I was following all graduates up in their professional career, through weekly tea-talks. This way, they could find solutions to the problems they encounter and we could benefit from their experience. So, the benefit was mutual. I have to admit, these meetings acted as the match-making environment for a quite a few couples, as well. So, today, we are all part of a group of colleagues and friends that come together with their families from time to time.
The idea to publish Archimedia, as well as its name, came as an outcome of these meetings. The aim was to promote the profession and the Department; create a written forum for graduates to correspond and get informed about each other; and to have a platform that would serve as the basis to a professional association among Turkish archivists and records managers.
So, I have published, edited—with the help of students and graduates, and personally financed the bi-monthly Archimedia—the first and the only Archives and Records Management Journal/Newsletter in Turkey until recently; distributed free of charge to 350 subscribers—from May 1993 to May 1998 almost without interruption.
I have founded ArchiMac BBS —the first Macintosh BBS in Turkey with a network connection, dedicated to the archives and the Mac community—out of personal funds and have been running it—again, as a free service—as its systems operator since March 1996. On 1 October 1998, ArchiMac BBS got on the Internet as a web-BBS and can be reached at http://www.archimac.org/. The details about how it came into existence can be found under the "Computers" section.
The web server of the system carries sub-sites on the Archives Department at Marmara University; ArchiMac BBS itself; Archimedia; Journal of Archival Studies (the academic successor to Archimedia); and the Profession. The "list of mailing lists on archives, records management and museums" section of this sub-site have become really popular and received more than 2500 hits in the first 15 days following its promotion and about another 2000 in the following month.
After Archimedia ceased its publication, we needed a new platform to maintain the communication among Turkish archivists and records managers. So, I founded ArchiTurk—the first and the only electronic mailing list in Turkey/Turkish to discuss issues on archives and records management, in February 1999.
With the aim to promote the Department at an international level, I have corresponded with the project teams working on ICA/SAE's "International Bibliography of Archival Science Project" in 1992 and 1999; and on University of Montreal's "State of Development of Archival Science Project" '1999.
I have to admit I have learnt a lot on Public Relations during the years I have run the project to set up an Archives Museum for Yapi Kredi Bank, because almost all of the material was created by the Public Relations Department of the Bank. Bringing together all this information, I turned them into a paper and presented it at the International Archival Congress in Vienna in August 2004, to be subsequently published as an article in an academic journal.
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