The Women’s Works Library and Information Center Foundation, which conducts women-centered archival and library studies, contributes to women’s history research and historiography with the documents it collects, the collections it creates, the events it organizes, and the publications it produces. Recently, through its document acquisition efforts, the foundation has added the diaries and letters of poet, writer, and teacher Halide Nusret Zorlutuna (1901-1984) to its collection.

As a result of this document acquisition effort, a memory book containing notes written by her high school classmates addressed to Halide Nusret Zorlutuna, her diary from the 1930s, a diary she kept during her teaching years in Edirne in 1924, and hundreds of letters sent to her and her husband Aziz Bey were included in the Halide Nusret Zorlutuna Special Archive, part of the foundation’s women’s special archive collections.

Halide Nusret Zorlutuna’s special archive was donated to the foundation by her sister, a teacher, story, novel, radio and theater play writer İsmet Kür (1916-2003) in 2002. Covering the period between 1925-2001 and with a shelf length of 0.7 meters, the archive includes numerous documents in Turkish, old Turkish alphabet, and French, such as letters sent from Halide Nusret Zorlutuna to İsmet Kür, a thank-you letter addressed to İsmet Kür, various photographs including those with President Celal Bayar and Şûkufe Nihal, and clippings from many magazines and newspapers containing news and articles about Halide Nusret, as well as notes and postcards. The archive has been further enriched by the newly added documents, and inventory and cataloging work is ongoing. (http://kadineserleri.org/)