Traces of yiddishkeit. The Yiddish collection at the Jewish Library, Stockholm
The aim of the project is to do an inventory of the largest Yiddish collection in Sweden, that of the Jewish Library in Stockholm, and to make the collection fully searchable through the national library catalogue LIBRIS and internationally through WorldCat. As part of the project, stock will be taken of what parts of the collection are of such national and international interest as to warrant digitalization at a later stage.
The Jewish Library in Stockholm has holdings that testify to all the various stages of Jewish migration to Sweden. It currently has more than 25 000 volumes, mostly in Swedish, English, Hebrew, Yiddish and German, but also in a number of other languages. Its Yiddish collection approximates 4000 volumes. It contains the major classics of Yiddish literature, translations into Yiddish of international literature, which testify to the reading habits of the Yiddish-speaking community. The collection also contains religious literature as well as large amounts of periodicals: membership bulletins, journals, newspapers etc that testify to Jewish life in Sweden and other European countries during the 19th and early 20th century. The project is a collaboration between the Jewish Library and Södertörn University and has been planned in close consultation with the department of Yiddish, Lund University; Paideia - The European Institute of Jewish Studies in Stockholm; the Jewish Museum and the Forum for Jewish Studies, Uppsala University.
Final report
The purpose and development of the infrastructure project
The main purpose of the project was to make an inventory of the Yiddish collection at the Jewish Library, Stockholm, by going through all catalogue entries where the library's books are found in the national library database LIBRIS.
The original plan was to ensure that all records are accurately and consistently transcribed, in order to make them fully searchable for international researchers via WorldCat. This work has taken longer than expected, mainly because during the course of the work we have decided to also enter additional information in the records, for example author names and titles as they appear in the original, i.e. in Hebrew letters, to facilitate searches. In the work with the scanning, we have also found interesting metadata in the form of ex libris or other information about previous owners or other provenance. This metadata has been entered into the LIBRIS records to form the basis for future research. In retrospect, we also realise that we had estimated too little time to go through each record in LIBRIS. All in all, this meant that we had to prioritize which categories we considered most important.
The project's results so far, and a discussion about them
The most important result from an infrastructure point of view is that the records in LIBRIS have become much searchable for Swedish and international researchers. However, it is regrettable that we have not had time to review all catalogue entries, but only about 1000 of the 3403 that were in LIBRIS when the project started. Here it would be desirable that additional funds were allocated to review the remaining items as well.
Yiddish literature in the following categories has reviewed (divided according to the Jewish Library's own classification system):
J 3. General and mixed
J 3:1 Conversational dictionaries and encyclopedias
J 3:5 Publications by and about associations, societies, etc
J 3:8 Collected works
J 3:9 Celebratory and memorial writings, persons
J 4. Linguistics
J 4:1 Hebrew
J 4:2 Yiddish
J 5. The Bible, Tanach
J 5:4 Bible translations
J 5:8 Bible Commentaries
J 8. Judaism's relationship to other religions
J 8:1 The Christian Bible
J 8:3 Life of Jesus
J 8:8 Judaism and Christianity
J 9. Talmud
J 9:1 Introductions
J 9:4 Biographies
J 9:9 Talmud, translations and anthologies
J 11. Agada
J 11:1 General texts
J 11:2 Midrashes to the Bible
J 11:3 Other midrashes
J 11:5 Sermons by an author
J 12. Worship, order of worship
J 12:1 General texts
J 13. Jewish theology
J 13:1 Jewish doctrine
J 15. Philosophy
J 15:3 Jewish philosophers
J 15:7 Pedagogy
J 18 Cultural history
J 18:1 General texts
J 18:4 Humor
J 19. History
J 19:4 General Jewish history
J 20. Biographies
J 20:1 Biographies, collections
J 20:2 Biographies, individual persons
J 20:3 Genealogy, family research
J 21. Literature studies
J 21:1 General
J 21:4 Special authors
J 23. Art
J 23:2 Painting, sculpture, arts and crafts
J 23:3 Music and dance
J 23:4 Theatre, film, photo and radio
J 25. Political science and sociology
J 25:1 Political science, economics, statistics, business
J 25:3 Sociology and identity
J 26. Natural science and medicine
J 26:1 Physics, chemistry, biology and anthropology
J 16:2 Medicine, hygiene and sexology
J 27. Geography
J 27:9 Travelogues, guidebooks, ecology (except Israel)
J 28. Anti-Semitism
J 28:2 The Jewish question, the racial question
J 28:6 Apologetics
J 29. Zionism and Israel
J 29:1 General texts
J 29:4 Zionism: history
J 29:5 Zionism: classic and other writings
J 29:6 Palestine until 1948
J 29:8 Israel
J 30. Nazism
J 30:1 Eyewitness accounts
J 30:2 History of World War II
J 30:4 Concentration camps and ghettos, various locations
J 30:8 Nazism, various countries
J 30:10 Nazism, other: art as war booty, film, the righteous, escape from justice, etc.
A second result is more unexpected. The fact that we have talked about the project in various contexts has led to the collection being noticed nationally and internationally, and this in turn has led to a sharp increase in the number of inquiries regarding this collection. These requests have mainly consisted of requests for interlibrary loans and copies. Prior to the project the library did not receive any questions at all regarding the Yiddish collection during a normal year, in recent years it has received about 40 requests from researchers in Sweden, other European countries, North America, Israel and South Africa.
A third result is that during the course of the work we have located certain books and other printed matter which in some cases are only found in this collection or in a few other libraries in the world. This applies above all to Yiddish material of Swedish origin. This material needs to be digitized in order to be preserved and made available.
A fourth result is that through this review we have seen new aspects of how the collection can be viewed as an artifact in itself which through its content says something about the history and intellectual interests of the Yiddish-speaking Swedish population. Among other things, the collection includes a relatively large collection of so-called churben literature, that is, literature about the Holocaust, published in Yiddish in the Soviet Union mainly during the decades after World War II.
Briefly about how the infrastructure has been used and what research has been started using the infrastructure.
a. Joacim Hansson, professor of library and information science at Linnaeus University, has made a special study of the unique classification system that the Jewish Library has, and which also characterizes the organization of the Yiddish collection. The study is included in his newly published book De ordnade böckernas folk.
b. We will apply for more funds to be able to digitize the material that we have found to be extra valuable and unique. However, the Jewish Library does not have the resources to ensure the long-term storage of this digitized material and we have therefore received a promise from the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachussetts that they will take care of the digitized files and include them in their collection.
c. During the current year, we have established contact with Sweden's Yiddish Association (Svenska Jiddischförbundet, SJ). Our collaboration will primarily take place on three levels:
- SJ has informed its members about our project and about the Yiddish collection, which is now becoming more accessible, not only to researchers.
- Members from SJ can help us go through the new donations of Yiddish material that are donated to the Jewish library.
- We plan to apply for funding for a new project to map the existence of Jewish libraries in Sweden during the 20th century. Here, SJ will help us find older people who may have memories of these and whom we can interview.
The project participants have on several occasions given presentations about the project with the aim of arousing interest in the Yiddish collection:
- Forum for Jewish Studies, Uppsala University, May 6, 2020.
- Higher Seminar in Religious Studies, Mid-Sweden University, January 27, 2021.
- Higher Seminar for Religious Studies, Södertörn University, 18 Feb, 2021.
- The Jewish congregation in Stockholm, March 21, 2021.
- Conference: Contemporary Jewry in the Nordic Countries: History, Identities, and Practice, May 20, 2021. Södertörn University.
- Conference: Behind the scenes of the city, October 26, 2021. Stockholm City Museum.
- Higher Seminar for History of Religions, Lund University, 24 November 2021.
- Göteborg Book Fair, September 23, 2023.
Unforeseen technical and methodological problems, as well as deviations from the original plan
We have had to adapt the working methods to restrictions during the pandemic. The original plan was for Simo Muir to come to the library and work with the collection there. Instead, Malin Norrby has scanned all the cover pages and these files have been sent to Simo Muir in London. Originally, we also had the ambition to catalog the Yiddish material that the Jewish Library has received as donations in recent years. It turned out not to be possible to do within the framework of the project, simply because the number of books was much larger than we had anticipated. In addition, the attention the project has received in Jewish circles has led to even more donations, so the amount of uncatalogued material is now greater, not less, than at the beginning of the project.
The integration of the work in the organization, as well as how the infrastructure will be maintained in the long term.
Since the project was completed, the Jewish congregation in Stockholm (JFST) has taken new initiatives linked to the Yiddish collection. This is because the Royal Library has commissioned the Jewish congregation in Stockholm to build a national resource library for Yiddish.
- JFST has hired a specialized cataloger who works with cataloging the older Yiddish literature in the collection.
- JFST has employed a Yiddish consultant with a focus on libraries who is working on developing a model that should be able to serve the public and libraries with advice and books about and in Yiddish.
Infrastructure availability and relation to requirements for open accessibility and Open Science.
The material is an integral part of LIBRIS, so LIBRIS continues to manage it.
Any international collaborations
The bookplates we have found so far will be sent in scanned form to Nick Block, (German Studies, Boston College) who is the world's leading expert on Jewish bookplates and who will include this material in his ongoing research.
For future collaboration with the Yiddish Book Center, see above.
Any publications resulting from the research conducted in connection with the infrastructure
See separate list. In addition to the publications of the project staff, Joacim Hansson's book is also listed.
Links to own web pages
Resource library for Yiddish: https://jfst.se/fler-tjanster/bibliotek-bokutlan/resursbiblioteket-for-jiddisch/
The main purpose of the project was to make an inventory of the Yiddish collection at the Jewish Library, Stockholm, by going through all catalogue entries where the library's books are found in the national library database LIBRIS.
The original plan was to ensure that all records are accurately and consistently transcribed, in order to make them fully searchable for international researchers via WorldCat. This work has taken longer than expected, mainly because during the course of the work we have decided to also enter additional information in the records, for example author names and titles as they appear in the original, i.e. in Hebrew letters, to facilitate searches. In the work with the scanning, we have also found interesting metadata in the form of ex libris or other information about previous owners or other provenance. This metadata has been entered into the LIBRIS records to form the basis for future research. In retrospect, we also realise that we had estimated too little time to go through each record in LIBRIS. All in all, this meant that we had to prioritize which categories we considered most important.
The project's results so far, and a discussion about them
The most important result from an infrastructure point of view is that the records in LIBRIS have become much searchable for Swedish and international researchers. However, it is regrettable that we have not had time to review all catalogue entries, but only about 1000 of the 3403 that were in LIBRIS when the project started. Here it would be desirable that additional funds were allocated to review the remaining items as well.
Yiddish literature in the following categories has reviewed (divided according to the Jewish Library's own classification system):
J 3. General and mixed
J 3:1 Conversational dictionaries and encyclopedias
J 3:5 Publications by and about associations, societies, etc
J 3:8 Collected works
J 3:9 Celebratory and memorial writings, persons
J 4. Linguistics
J 4:1 Hebrew
J 4:2 Yiddish
J 5. The Bible, Tanach
J 5:4 Bible translations
J 5:8 Bible Commentaries
J 8. Judaism's relationship to other religions
J 8:1 The Christian Bible
J 8:3 Life of Jesus
J 8:8 Judaism and Christianity
J 9. Talmud
J 9:1 Introductions
J 9:4 Biographies
J 9:9 Talmud, translations and anthologies
J 11. Agada
J 11:1 General texts
J 11:2 Midrashes to the Bible
J 11:3 Other midrashes
J 11:5 Sermons by an author
J 12. Worship, order of worship
J 12:1 General texts
J 13. Jewish theology
J 13:1 Jewish doctrine
J 15. Philosophy
J 15:3 Jewish philosophers
J 15:7 Pedagogy
J 18 Cultural history
J 18:1 General texts
J 18:4 Humor
J 19. History
J 19:4 General Jewish history
J 20. Biographies
J 20:1 Biographies, collections
J 20:2 Biographies, individual persons
J 20:3 Genealogy, family research
J 21. Literature studies
J 21:1 General
J 21:4 Special authors
J 23. Art
J 23:2 Painting, sculpture, arts and crafts
J 23:3 Music and dance
J 23:4 Theatre, film, photo and radio
J 25. Political science and sociology
J 25:1 Political science, economics, statistics, business
J 25:3 Sociology and identity
J 26. Natural science and medicine
J 26:1 Physics, chemistry, biology and anthropology
J 16:2 Medicine, hygiene and sexology
J 27. Geography
J 27:9 Travelogues, guidebooks, ecology (except Israel)
J 28. Anti-Semitism
J 28:2 The Jewish question, the racial question
J 28:6 Apologetics
J 29. Zionism and Israel
J 29:1 General texts
J 29:4 Zionism: history
J 29:5 Zionism: classic and other writings
J 29:6 Palestine until 1948
J 29:8 Israel
J 30. Nazism
J 30:1 Eyewitness accounts
J 30:2 History of World War II
J 30:4 Concentration camps and ghettos, various locations
J 30:8 Nazism, various countries
J 30:10 Nazism, other: art as war booty, film, the righteous, escape from justice, etc.
A second result is more unexpected. The fact that we have talked about the project in various contexts has led to the collection being noticed nationally and internationally, and this in turn has led to a sharp increase in the number of inquiries regarding this collection. These requests have mainly consisted of requests for interlibrary loans and copies. Prior to the project the library did not receive any questions at all regarding the Yiddish collection during a normal year, in recent years it has received about 40 requests from researchers in Sweden, other European countries, North America, Israel and South Africa.
A third result is that during the course of the work we have located certain books and other printed matter which in some cases are only found in this collection or in a few other libraries in the world. This applies above all to Yiddish material of Swedish origin. This material needs to be digitized in order to be preserved and made available.
A fourth result is that through this review we have seen new aspects of how the collection can be viewed as an artifact in itself which through its content says something about the history and intellectual interests of the Yiddish-speaking Swedish population. Among other things, the collection includes a relatively large collection of so-called churben literature, that is, literature about the Holocaust, published in Yiddish in the Soviet Union mainly during the decades after World War II.
Briefly about how the infrastructure has been used and what research has been started using the infrastructure.
a. Joacim Hansson, professor of library and information science at Linnaeus University, has made a special study of the unique classification system that the Jewish Library has, and which also characterizes the organization of the Yiddish collection. The study is included in his newly published book De ordnade böckernas folk.
b. We will apply for more funds to be able to digitize the material that we have found to be extra valuable and unique. However, the Jewish Library does not have the resources to ensure the long-term storage of this digitized material and we have therefore received a promise from the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachussetts that they will take care of the digitized files and include them in their collection.
c. During the current year, we have established contact with Sweden's Yiddish Association (Svenska Jiddischförbundet, SJ). Our collaboration will primarily take place on three levels:
- SJ has informed its members about our project and about the Yiddish collection, which is now becoming more accessible, not only to researchers.
- Members from SJ can help us go through the new donations of Yiddish material that are donated to the Jewish library.
- We plan to apply for funding for a new project to map the existence of Jewish libraries in Sweden during the 20th century. Here, SJ will help us find older people who may have memories of these and whom we can interview.
The project participants have on several occasions given presentations about the project with the aim of arousing interest in the Yiddish collection:
- Forum for Jewish Studies, Uppsala University, May 6, 2020.
- Higher Seminar in Religious Studies, Mid-Sweden University, January 27, 2021.
- Higher Seminar for Religious Studies, Södertörn University, 18 Feb, 2021.
- The Jewish congregation in Stockholm, March 21, 2021.
- Conference: Contemporary Jewry in the Nordic Countries: History, Identities, and Practice, May 20, 2021. Södertörn University.
- Conference: Behind the scenes of the city, October 26, 2021. Stockholm City Museum.
- Higher Seminar for History of Religions, Lund University, 24 November 2021.
- Göteborg Book Fair, September 23, 2023.
Unforeseen technical and methodological problems, as well as deviations from the original plan
We have had to adapt the working methods to restrictions during the pandemic. The original plan was for Simo Muir to come to the library and work with the collection there. Instead, Malin Norrby has scanned all the cover pages and these files have been sent to Simo Muir in London. Originally, we also had the ambition to catalog the Yiddish material that the Jewish Library has received as donations in recent years. It turned out not to be possible to do within the framework of the project, simply because the number of books was much larger than we had anticipated. In addition, the attention the project has received in Jewish circles has led to even more donations, so the amount of uncatalogued material is now greater, not less, than at the beginning of the project.
The integration of the work in the organization, as well as how the infrastructure will be maintained in the long term.
Since the project was completed, the Jewish congregation in Stockholm (JFST) has taken new initiatives linked to the Yiddish collection. This is because the Royal Library has commissioned the Jewish congregation in Stockholm to build a national resource library for Yiddish.
- JFST has hired a specialized cataloger who works with cataloging the older Yiddish literature in the collection.
- JFST has employed a Yiddish consultant with a focus on libraries who is working on developing a model that should be able to serve the public and libraries with advice and books about and in Yiddish.
Infrastructure availability and relation to requirements for open accessibility and Open Science.
The material is an integral part of LIBRIS, so LIBRIS continues to manage it.
Any international collaborations
The bookplates we have found so far will be sent in scanned form to Nick Block, (German Studies, Boston College) who is the world's leading expert on Jewish bookplates and who will include this material in his ongoing research.
For future collaboration with the Yiddish Book Center, see above.
Any publications resulting from the research conducted in connection with the infrastructure
See separate list. In addition to the publications of the project staff, Joacim Hansson's book is also listed.
Links to own web pages
Resource library for Yiddish: https://jfst.se/fler-tjanster/bibliotek-bokutlan/resursbiblioteket-for-jiddisch/