In honor of Jewish American Heritage Month (May), we’re highlighting unique materials relating to the history of the Jews in the Americas. In the past, of course, we’ve discussed the 18th century history of Hebrew and Jewish materials in the Columbia context, but the vast collections in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library highlight many […]
University calendars tend to operate on a different year than the standard January-December. The academic calendar begins in the fall, and the budget calendar restarts in the summer, and so January 1 is simply the restart after a holiday break. However, the new year is a good time to consider the many new unique and […]
Happy New Year! December 2016 marked the end of a three year project to catalog Columbia’s rare Hebraica and Judaica collections. While Columbia has been collecting Judaica since its inception (with a donation from Kings’ College founder Samuel Johnson that included his Hebrew-Latin Psalms), many of the books were left uncataloged due to lack of […]
From its inception in 1754, the founders of Columbia University felt that the study of Hebrew was critical to understanding the classics. Columbia’s collection includes founder Samuel Johnson’s own copy of a Hebrew-Latin psalms with the Hebrew alphabet written in his own hand. Another professor in the 18th century was Johann Kunze, who taught Hebrew […]
The wonderful thing about Columbia’s rare Judaica collection is that there is so much yet to be discovered – and rediscovered! A brief foray into the RBML rare stacks always yields wonderful stories. A couple of weeks ago, I began looking at some of the very largest rare Hebrew books, trying to see if any […]
It has been a busy year for Judaica acquisitions at the Columbia RBML. Three important acquisitions have been added to our collection: A collection of forty Italian Broadsides depicting regulations on various communities (including Ferrara, Padua, Ancona, and others), only one of which is in the extensive Valmadonna collection of broadsides. We plan to digitize […]
Just in time for the beginning of the Fall semester, I am pleased to announce the purchase of two new databases for Columbia’s Judaica collection: 1. Otzar HaHochma – a database of 72,700 digitized Hebrew books, from the 15th century to the present day. Includes books from the presses of Mossad HaRav Kook and Mekhon […]
Columbia’s printed Judaica collection is composed of many different books, each with their own story to tell. Unfortunately, however, only about 1/3 of our books were actually in our online catalog. To rectify this, we hired Hannah Vaitsblit, a Barnard student who has been carefully checking every Judaica book in our rare stacks to make […]
Columbia University Libraries/Information Services (CUL/IS) has received an award of $150,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities to digitize field notes and linguistic surveys from the Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry (LCAAJ) archive. The LCAAJ archive is an extraordinary resource for research in Yiddish studies that can shed much valuable light on […]
In preparation for the elections in Israel, to be held next week on March 17, I’d like to highlight two new freely available resources. The first, created by the National Library of Israel, relates directly to the upcoming elections. The NLI has created an online portal to the “Election Chronicles,” an online exhibit and information […]