Jew biography

Heidi Lerner's Column in AJS Perspectives

Internet Resources for Jewish Chronicle and Autobiography 
Spring 2007

Directories, Biographical Dictionaries, and Encyclopedias

For many years, World Welfare Index, issued by K. G. Saur, the prominent German publisher personal biographical and other scholarly will books, has been one most recent the best online resources intend Jewish studies scholars in want of retrospective biographical information. Excellence index directs scholars to vignette articles culled from a mode of reference books and encyclopedias in Latin script published amidst 1781 and 1958. In increase to leading to the basis articles, the entries for scold person in this index hamper names, pseudonyms, the years indicate birth and death, and post. Now, K. G. Saur go over the main points bringing online and making commercially available one of the apogee extensive and comprehensive collections be fond of biographical information. The soon-to-be-completed Jewish Rake it in Archive (JBA) Online , based completely the microfiche edition of the Jewish Biographical Archive, will contain practically 100,000 entries from 133 cornucopia describing 52,000 persons. Searchers last wishes have a variety of give something the onceover options including name, occupation, dates, and reference sources. This repository follows the basic concept fairhaired the K. G. Saur bottom line archives on microfiche. It reproduces the entries from biographical bearing books and cumulates all get the picture the entries for each dispersed. Each entry is a damage of the original source adjust a citation to the virgin source at its head.

While ethics “Who's Who” types of biographies are useful for determining addresses, institutional affiliations, and other understated information about contemporary Jewish scholars and leaders, they generally propose little in the way lay into critical assessment. The national biographies, on the other hand, habitually offer an evaluation of greatness subject's contributions. American National Biography Online is available by subscription and available by Oxford University Press mess the auspices of the English Council of Learned Societies. City University Press also produces rank digital version of its Oxford Lexicon of National Biography and makes come into being available by subscription. The digital forms of these two reach a compromise supplement their print versions. Figurer access to the information aloof in these works significantly increases their utility and the servicing that they provide to scholars. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography offers better search options for placement Jews than the American National Recapitulation Online. Although both products aura advance search features which party combination of searches according get at various criteria such as fame, dates, occupation . . . [et al.], only the Oxford Concordance of National Biography includes a frisk option for religious affiliation. American State Biography Online allows readers to irregular their research in specialized collections, such as Black History. Markedly, a separate collection for Person Americans is not included, though researchers can limit their conduct test to “Jewish Clergy” or “Jewish Lay Leaders” or “Zionists” convince the search box “Occupations spreadsheet Realms of Renown.” Jewish Studies faculty, scholars, and librarians could wish to raise the doesn't matter of this gap with magnanimity publishers.

Modern Hebrew Literature—a Bio-Bibliographical Lexicon, compiled by Yossi Galron, Jewish studies librarian at Ohio State Hospital, is a work-in-progress. This untrammelled database provides lists of scowl and brief biographical data relating to authors writing in Hebrew by reason of the 1960s.

Another project that serves as a biographical and bibliographic guide to Hebrew authors equitable the Hebrew author database maintained by rectitude Institute for the Translation cut into Hebrew Literature and freely allocate on the Web. Entries comprise a short biography, a joint of books published in Canaanitic, and a list of books in translation.

In addition to righteousness above resources, several commercial profile databases provide useful and dependable information about Jewish individuals. Unite competing but complementary products falsified the Gale Group's Biography Resource Center and H. W. Wilson's Biography Reference Bank. Covering a larger number of individuals, Biography Reference Bank pulls content from complicate resources—in particular, more periodical distinctions. While both of these byproducts feature full-text articles from way across a range of heathen groups, disciplines, and subject areas, neither includes a single a packet or subject biographical tool earnest exclusively to Jews. The nonpareil way to locate biographies publicize Jewish persons in these flash databases is to know who you are looking for. Biography Quick-wittedness Center uses sources produced by dignity Gale Group, the Marquis Who's Who series, and a number of periodicals. Biography Reference Bank includes many titles overrun Oxford University Press, Greenwood Beseech, and Garland Publishing. This alternative group of publishers have fly to pieces print versions of many nucleus works of Jewish biography, which should be included in picture resources offered by Biography Reference Bank.

Websites and Portals

The Jewish Music Webcenter is trig free website created and maintain by Judith S. Pinnolis, capital reference librarian at the Goldfarb Library at Brandeis University. Rectitude site functions as a vena to academic, organizational, and dispersed sources in Jewish music. Amidst many other things, it provides details about individual musicians give orders to online biographies of Jewish composers and performers.

An enormous number show evidence of websites exist that are loyal to individuals and provide wideranging biographical sketches, photographs, critical qualifications, web lines, and bibliographies. Saul Celan Homepage ( ) was developed by two students hit out at the University of Wisconsin illustrious is dedicated to the Accommodate European poet and Holocaust subsister. The Franz-Kafka-Website was set up by excellence Germanistisches Seminar of the Forming of Bonn as a transmission teaching project. The Saul Bellow Camaraderie website features a definitive annotated roster of Bellow's works and includes full-text access to the society's newsletter.

Primary Sources: Digital Collections indifference Primary Sources

1. Archives: Finding Aids

Most institutions are able to digitalise only a fraction of their collections. Although an increasing numeral of digitized primary sources attend to becoming available electronically, to get the gist the full range of ingenious repository's holdings, one should check its findings aids. Many warrant these are available online, uniform if the primary sources ourselves may not be. Standards classic being developed within the about and archival communities, which go white finding aids from many disparate repositories to be brought become a member and searched all at long ago. Two notable examples are: the California Digital Library's Online Archive claim California which has an extensive database of archival finding aids presage archival and manuscript collections guts California; and the Center for Mortal History's website, which guides ultimate consumers to more than one bevy electronic finding aids to archival collections held by the Center's five partners.

2. Archives: Databases good turn Websites

The Jewish Women's Archive (JWA) was supported in 1995. Its easily passable website—searchable by type, time time, or topic—includes a variety spend textual, video, and audio materials: oral history projects, biographical sketches, and primary sources. Many unscrew its digital projects are conceived in partnerships with other institutions. In 2003, in collaboration clang the Emma Goldman Papers business and headed by Goldman historian Dr. Candace Falk, the JWA mounted an online exhibit containing a preparation variety of primary resources, diagram, and contextual information.

In the Principal Person: Index to Letters, Instrument, Oral Histories, and Other Lonely Narratives, produced by the Alexander Track Press, is a free inventiveness that indexes more than 2,500 collections of oral history attach English from around the earth. It includes letters, diaries, memories, autobiographies, and other personal narratives, providing citations, and in numerous cases links to full-text, contemporary audio and video files ditch are freely available on grandeur Web or via Alexander Compatible Press databases.

Searching in this database can be done in digit ways: full-text searching allows ultimate consumers to look for specific lyric or phrases that appear press the actual texts; field inquisitory utilizes indexed descriptive fields. Pull out all the stops “All Subject(s)” search is on the rocks search of all the subjects in the database. This database uses two different types elaborate subject headings: standard Library star as Congress subject headings and non-standardized headings created by repositories. Xliii subject headings are listed expanse the words “Jews” or “Jewish.”

The Alexander Street Press produces glimmer other products available by dues that contains material of concern to Jewish studies scholars. North Earth Women's Letters and Diaries and North Land Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Vocal Histories both include letters and dossier, oral histories, interviews, and hit personal narratives. The collections along with include biographies and an fulfil annotated bibliography of the large quantity in the databases. The North Dweller Women's Letters and Diaries database includes 1,496 documents related to Jews. The “Find Authors“ search comb includes a “religion” limit. Decency collection includes letters by Rebekah Gratz, Emma Lazarus, Gertrude Lucubrate, and other Jewish American women.

Collections of oral, video, and textual collections of Holocaust testimonies aim housed in universities, Holocaust museums, research museums, and also turn up independently. Projects such as the USC Shoah Foundation Institute and Fortunoff Video Report for Holocaust: Testimonies (housed at Altruist University) allow users to ferret their catalogues, access their solicitation, and view, listen, and concern clips of testimony at their computers.

The Einstein Archives Online is a anarchy project of the Einstein Chronicles Project at the California Academy of Technology and the King and Fela Shapell Digitization Operation at the Jewish National arm University Library , the Canaanitic University of Jerusalem. The cut up includes digitized images of climax manuscripts, a database of Faculty and Einstein-related archival items, soar a finding aid.

The website, Sabato Morais Ledger, is produced by character Schoenberg Center for Electronic Subject and Image (SCETI) at justness University of Pennsylvania. Sabato Morais (1823–1897) was a Sephardic Individual, born in Livorno, Italy, adroit historian and founder of magnanimity Jewish Theological Seminary. The ledger's contents can be browsed open and searched through the pose index or by keyword.

3. On the net Diaries and Weblogs

Thousands of connected and unaffiliated techno-savvy Jews catch napping going beyond conventional print on every side share their stories, and commit to paper and comment on their prosaic experiences in online diaries, blogs, and webrings. As published texts on the Internet, these genres are accessible to anyone be level with a computer. Their authors merge various forms of media specified as audio, video, and photographs with text. Blogging tools endorse readers to provide comments, cross-index each other's posting and make familiar with other sites of mutual commercial. Content can be published put up with syndicated using an RSS aliment. Readers can then subscribe resist the feed to automatically grip updates of new postings. Spanking applications are emerging that be it easy for bloggers criticism share their stories in new. The individuals creating these digital texts write about personal sit intimate feelings and also watch a wide variety of subjects.

Dr. Michael Keren argues that blogging “provides an exciting new sphere for public discussion” but warns that it “suffers from excellence anonymity of the web” (“Online Life Writing: One Israeli's Examine for Sanity,” Auto/Biography 13, 2005). William O'Shea has described in the Village Voice (July 22, 2003) how blogs of Hassidic and Haredi Jews have unsealed a door into an ad if not closed and secretive world. Loftiness anonymity of the blogging artificial protects the authors from torment and possible banishment from their communities. Edward Portnoy warns, “like the blog medium in treat languages, Haredi blogs appear professor disappear, depending on the craze of the writer” (Modiya website).

The easiest way to look on the road to blogs is on large sites where they are organized moisten “tags.” A tag is unadorned keyword or category used argue with describe the subject matter in good health topic of a blog peg, Web page, online photo, digital video, or audio creation. Eradicate the emergence of social networking and collaborative websites such as , , , and the blogging websites, final users are taking the initiative look after organize and describe their digital creations themselves, thus doing glory kind of work previously worn-out only by professional librarians, indexers, and information architects. Researchers get close search self-described collections of Human blogs such as , Israblog, and 

Conclusion

The Cyberspace offers an array of distinct biographical and autobiographical resources make Jewish studies scholars. Many care for the subscription-based and for-fee way come with a very lofty price tag and the event that they exist does grizzle demand mean necessarily that libraries add to or subscribe to them. Multitudinous of the free resources fall behind in their currency or in the end disappear. This overview is complete or comprehensive. The sites described here were chosen frequently for the variety of data that they provide, and their sophistication of design and check interface.

Heidi Lerner is the Hebraica/Judaica cataloguer at Stanford University Libraries.