The Database

Revision as of 07:24, 26 July 2020 by Andreas Fuchs (talk | contribs) (small edit)

Resources on German-Jewish Education and Religion provides access to bibliographical information on a variety of texts used in eighteen and nineteenth century Jewish education and religious practice, ranging from bible editions and anthologies, sermons and devotional works or textbooks and handbooks for Jewish education. The database is a beta-version and reflects a work in progress. It does not claim to be exhaustive and will need further development. However, some genres (i.e. sermons, hymn books, textbooks for Hebrew and religious instruction) are well represented in the data availble.

The data base is intended to systematically bring together bibliographical and biographical information and to serve as a point of interface with existing physical and digital collections in libraries all over the world. It includes core bibliographical data of an item supplemented by biographical information on its creator, information on languages used, available copies and digital versions and a basic subject cataloguing.

The database was developed on the basis of the collaborative research project Innovation through Tradition? Jewish Educational Media and Cultural Transformation in the Face of Modernity, conducted at the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research, the German Historical Washington and the Tel Aviv University between 2014 and 2019. Specialist in information and library science advised the project. In addition, this database project collaborated with the Judaica and Hebraica Collection of the Frankfurt University Library, whose holdings comprise the largest collection in the field in Germany and which are partially accessible through this data base.

Members of the research group “Innovation through Tradition?” are currently working on plans to further develop the database, by adding more data sets and expanding the text corpora, by improving and further enhancing the data sets, and by inquiring the implementation of additional technical tools that would enable researcher to explore and analyze the data presented here.