The Bilkent University Library is a lending and research library where open stacks permit free access to the entire collection except the rare book collections. The main library, housed in its own four-story building and annex at the center of the Main Campus, is open daily from 8:30 to 23:30 throughout the year. The East Campus branch library, located on the top floor of the Catering Center, is open (week-ends from 9:00) to 23:30 Sunday-Thursday and closes at 17:00 on Friday and Saturday. Summer hours are announced.

Bilkent Library was the first Turkish university library to offer its readers automated services through an integrated computer system. It provides the use of an online public access catalog to all readers with access to computer terminals both in the libraries and elsewhere on campus as well as to researchers, any place in the world, with access to the Internet. Circulation of the collection is also automated. Internet access is available in both libraries.

The library catalog BLISS can be accessed from the Internet through the Bilkent Web Server at http://bliss.bilkent.edu.tr/search.html.

The collection contains over 479,000 items. The book collection, of over 375,000 volumes, has been increasing by 20,000 volumes annually. The library subscribes to over 2,500 journals from the USA and Europe and provides electronic access to 30,000. Over $2 million is spent each year on books, journals and other resources, including video and audio cassettes, DVDs and VCDs, maps, microforms, CD-ROMs, music scores and sound recordings (compact disks, cassettes and phonograph records). The library also makes over 100 databases available on-line, which provide access to both citations, and in some cases, the full texts of journal articles, conference proceedings and papers and research material. Many of these databases are acquired through the library's membership in the Anatolian University Libraries Consortium. Working papers and technical reports are received from leading research centers in Europe, the USA and Japan.

The Turkish Plastic Arts Archive makes available a file of over 42,000 newspaper clippings, magazine articles and exhibition materials (invitations, posters, catalogs). The collection has been catalogued and is accessible on the Internet.

The Bilkent University Library has been designated by the Library of Congress to receive U.S. Government documents and makes them available in the Government Documents Room. The library is also a depository for World Bank regional publications and houses the Bilkent European Documentation Center.

Materials of special interest to students include catalogs of foreign universities and the ``easy reading'' section. The newspaper collection includes leading foreign newspapers. Photocopying is available in the library.

Reciprocal lending-borrowing agreements with a number of Ankara area universities make it possible for Bilkent graduate students and faculty to borrow books from those libraries as well.

Orientation tours of the Bilkent University Library are conducted on request in English and Turkish.