Originally established in the city of Şehremaneti (Istanbul Municipality) in 1924 by Osman Nuri Ergin, the library has been serving under the name of Atatürk Library in its current building since 1981.

The Atatürk Library operates as the central library affiliated to the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Directorate of Libraries and Museums. All libraries affiliated with the Directorate provide services as a branch of Atatürk Library.

The library has a qualified and special collection of over 500 thousand works such as printed Ottoman books, periodicals, manuscripts, rare works in foreign languages, maps, postcards, yearbooks, calendars, and personal archives.

Thanks to this outstanding collection the library is able to contribute to Turkey's intellectual and cultural capital, as well as being a reference source for domestic and foreign researchers.

As of September 5th, 2022 the process of re-transforming the Atatürk Library into a research library was completed, and the library collection was made available to researchers. As part of this transformation the library has increased the number and quality of events and publishing projects.

In order to improve the collection of Atatürk Library, rare works and current publications are purchased every year by our directorate. Thousands of rare works, special archives, and current publications, have been added to the library collection through purchase.

Users can access the digital archive containing more than 6 million data, and the catalogues of all our libraries at ataturkkitapligi.ibb.gov.tr.