The Changing Role of Archives in the Digital World: New Directions in Public History

Session Submission Type: Panel Session

Abstract

This panel explores the changing role of archives in Jewish history from the traditional focus on the academic realm to the needs of the lay community and catering to public history. Using digital assets and social media, archivists, librarians, and scholars in Jewish Studies are approaching new audiences, who have been traditionally not familiar with the work of archives.

Three presentations and the ensuing discussion will demonstrate how new approaches can bring positive results in outreach to non-academic audiences.

The 1938PROJEKT, released in 2018 by the Leo Baeck Institute—New York|Berlin (LBI) documents day-by-day events and the growing tension in Germany and Europe in the last year before the Holocaust. YIVO’s Bruce and Francesca Cernia Slovin Online Museum uses hundreds of the collection’s artifacts as the basis of narratives that recreate and immerse the audience in East European Jewish Life to bring knowledge to the broad public. The SHARED HISTORY PROJECT produced by LBI throughout 2021, tells stories about 1700 years of Jewish life in German-speaking lands using 58 artifacts from over 50 different archives and museums.

Sub Unit

• Pedagogy

Chair

• Gemma Birnbaum, American Jewish Historical Society

Individual Presentations

• 1938PROJEKT: Posts from the Past: Curating Archival Materials to Make the Past Present - William Weitzer, Leo Baeck Institute

• Engaging Young Audiences Online with Archival Artifacts: The Experience of the Beba Epstein Exhibition - Karolina Ziulkoski, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research

• SHARED HISTORY PROJECT – From Object to Story: How do the Simson Moped from East Germany and Soviet Veterans in Frankfurt Synagogue Support Discovering History? - Magdalena Wrobel, Leo Baeck Institute