Digital archive opens with Aikokul Tursunbek kyzy's “Twelve Kilometres”

15 October 2026 · Library

The National Library of Irad has opened its Digital Archive to readers, beginning with Aikokul Tursunbek kyzy's stories of the partition years.

The National Library of Irad, the university's library, has opened a Digital Archive for long-form works that are hard to find in print: literary works, memoirs, theses and the reports of the university's institutes. Every item can be read online in the library's reader or downloaded as a PDF.

The first works in the archive are Aikokul Tursunbek kyzy's Twelve Kilometres (On Eki Chakyrym), twelve stories and a coda from the partition years of 2006–2009, published by Arsha Books in Iradi in 2015 and in Aidana Mukash kyzy's English translation in 2016, and the author's revised and expanded “Bazaar Chubar” (2019), the story of a walnut buyer's daughter in Bazar-Korgon in the autumn of 2007.

“A national library should keep what its own country writes about itself,” said the director of the library. Authors and families who wish to deposit a work may write to library@talasuniversity.org.