The significance of setting up local laboratories for preserving the manuscripts in Turkey

The majority of the manuscripts remaining in the Turkish territory today are collections formed in the period after the Turks settled in Anatolia.After the Republic of Turkey was founded, attempts to determine and record the manuscript in Turkey were started. However, these attempts were not finalized and the exact number of manuscripts in private libraries, in foundations and mosques were not found out. There were other attempts to protect the manuscripts at later times, as well, yet, these projects were not concluded owing to the lack of qualified staff and the high costs of necessary technical equipments.The manuscripts can be easily affected by the various physical, chemical and biological conditions. The first scientific studies to protect and restore manuscripts were started in the 19th century. The protection process includes three different steps: pre and post-restoration protection processes and the direct restoration efforts.To maintain the sustainability of the manuscripts and to make them available to the researchers, there emerged the need to put the copies acquired from the original of the manuscript into the service of the users. Because it is very difficult to put all the manuscripts spreading over the whole country under protection not to mention the recording and copying processes, it would be beneficial to set up protection laboratories to the regions where manuscripts are widespread both in terms of sustaining the manuscripts in need of restoration and providing the academia with the copies gathered in the digital space.