A History of YIVO’s Prewar Archival Collections from 1925 to 2001

This article discusses YIVO's prewar collections, their looting and dispersion during the Holocaust, and the various subsequent efforts to recover them. The article includes a brief overview of YIVO's founding and prewar activities; a discussion of the Nazi looting of YIVO's materials during the Holocaust and the heroic efforts by Jews to save these materials during and after the war; YIVO's shift of its headquarters to New York City in 1939–1940; the US Government restitution of materials to YIVO in 1947; and efforts to reclaim additional materials from Lithuania from 1989 to 2001. The article closes with a brief note on YIVO's newly completed Vilna Collections Project to digitally reunite YIVO's pre-war materials in New York City with materials housed in three Lithuanian repositories.

Hiding in Plain Sight: Toward a Celebration of Hebraica Catalogers

This article offers a chance to readers to know better the Hebraica catalogers who have been active in the United States and Canada, currently active, retired and deceased.  There are two parts in this article. First the author presents how the article came into being, the source the author used and the existing bibliography. Then the author presents the field of Hebraica and Judaica librarianship in the “longue durée.” The second part contains testimonies of Hebraica catalogers who accepted to contribute to this article.

The Baltimore Hebrew Institute Collection: A Jewish Studies Library Re-imaged

The Baltimore Hebrew University (BHU) was one of a handful of independent Jewish studies institutions in the United States during the twentieth century. Located in the heart of the Baltimore Jewish community, it grew from a small teachers’ college to a doctoral degree-granting university over the course of its many decades. Several factors, including shifting educational trends, pragmatic economic considerations, and societal expectations altered the academic landscape for this institution; dwindling enrollment forced the once-thriving school to consider options for re-location, re-organization, or closure. A little more than ten years ago, BHU’s programs, faculty, and library were incorporated into a large public university located in nearby Towson, Maryland. As part of this move, the extensive resources of the BHU library were integrated with the much larger library of Towson University (TU), and both collections are now housed in one multi-storied building in the middle of a busy urban university campus. This article addresses the phenomenon of merging two disparate library collections and focuses on both the positive and negative results of consolidating academic libraries of different sizes, content, and cultural heritage. The author was a former librarian at BHU and is currently a librarian at TU

It’s Raining Lemons! How the COVID-19 Pandemic Reshaped the Association of Jewish Libraries

The COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, changing expectations and work around the globe. The pandemic forced the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL) to expedite changes that had been moving along slowly, leading to a completely revamped organization. This article goes through some of the background leading up to COVID-19 and how AJL was already changing and continues to change to meet the needs of its members

Two Articles by Ber Borokhov about Judaica Libraries and Librarians

Two translated articles published by Ber Borokhov (1881–1917) in the Yiddish newspaper Di varhayt (Warheit) in New York, in 1917. The translations are accompanied by an essay that recounts Borokhov's history, scholarship, and keen interst in Jewish libraries

Jewish German Immigrant Booksellers in Twentieth-Century Ecuador

When German Jews looked for a country to receive them in the late 1930s Ecuador had its doors open for immigration. This paper traces the story of four German Jewish refugees who landed in Ecuador and established bookstores and libraries in a country that knew little of either. Rescuing their lives from oblivion is a way to highlight their cultural contribution to their host country