Who is archiving the archivists?

• In Event: Digital Jewish Culture: From Documentation to Interpretation

Abstract

As projects in the Yiddish - and indeed the Jewish - world become more technically complex, an increasingly compelling need to capture the fruits of so much time, funding, and expertise emerges. Yet there is no systematic attempt to capture and preserve the incredible cultural moment we are in right now. Various institutions are capturing their own websites but there's an incredible opportunity to develop a more ambitious plan to truly document this moment in Jewish history for future generations. All that would be needed is a digital preservation system, a central address, and a movement of zamlers, along the lines of YIVO’s early years, that would take the initiative to document the ephemera of their own digital lives and send it to a central location to describe it and preserve it for the future. Digital information as we know is fragile and easily lost, the equivalent of the thin paper afishn pasted to the walls of Shnipishok. Without a new zamler movement the incredible fecundity and creativity of this moment may not last as long as they will.

Author

• Sarah Ponichtera, Seton Hall University