Popularizing Primary Sources: Virtual Libraries, Archives, and Public Access to Jewish Studies Sources

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Session Sponsor: Posen Digital Library of Jewish Culture & Civilization

Abstract

Increasing online access to primary sources and scholarly material has the potential to dramatically change how scholars and the general public access information. This roundtable brings together scholars and professionals who have online projects bridging the fields of Jewish studies, digital humanities, and education to explore best practices and challenges for making primary sources available to their audiences. Panelists will share their specific projects (detailed below) as case studies to answer these questions, as well as discuss their own digital strategies (and challenges) for increasing public access to primary sources and scholarly material. With an increase in online archives, questions about how data is shared, contextualized, curated, and promoted are more important than ever, including the spaces of interchange. The goal of the roundtable is concrete, we envision the discussion leading to a collective list of best practices to be shared within the session and beyond, which will be applicable to a diverse array of projects in the field of Jewish studies.

Framing Questions:
1. What are some best practices and challenges in making primary sources and scholarly material accessible publicly? To include financial, copyright, and ethical concerns and consideration.
2. What is the role of education and educational resources in making this material accessible?
3. What does it mean to be a digital archive as opposed to a digital project? With a repository of primary sources, what type of curation is involved?
4. Explore the challenges inherent in the diversity of Jewish studies and Jewish source material. How can we build platforms for sharing sources with the public that embrace this diversity (temporal, geographic, linguistic, disciplinarity)?
5. What are the obligations that result from sharing primary sources?

Participants:
Sara Wolkenfeld (Sefaria) will share Sefaria’s approach to opening up digital access to Jewish texts and what it means to truly democratize access to these texts as well as explore some of the possibilities for downstream use of data that is released with a Creative Commons license.
Alison Joseph (Posen Digital Library) will share challenges and advantages of making copyrighted material, the need for increasingly using Creative Commons licenses, and making primary sources available in translation.
Dana Herman (American Jewish Archives) will discuss what the AJA has learned with over a decade of digital projects under its belt and how it balances the (non-digital) demands of a large archival institution with the priorities of digitizing and making its material accessible to as wide an audience as possible.
Rachel Richman (Princeton Geniza Project) will discuss how collaborating with different libraries, learning from digital humanities experts, and leveraging the strengths of undergraduate and graduate researchers allowed us to build a more accessible and engaging website and transcription interface.
Abigail H. Meyer (Metropolitan Museum of Art) will discuss challenges of public domain and museum/institutional photography, potential forums and innovative methods for the share of images, visual content, and associated scholarship including access to the public.

Sub Unit

• Pedagogy

Moderator

• Noam F. Pianko, University of Washington

Discussants

• Sara Wolkenfeld, Sefaria

• Alison Joseph, Gratz College

• Dana Herman, American Jewish Archives

• Rachel Richman, Princeton University

• Abigail H. Meyer, Metropolitan Museum of Art