Librarian
About
Strengths of the Jewish Studies collection include Rabbinical literature and Biblical studies, Late antiquity, Jewish history, Zionism, Jewish philosophy and thought, Jewish Diaspora, Land of Israel history and geography, Holocaust- history, literature and personal narrative documentation and biography, Hebrew literature: Piyyutim, medieval and modern, Arab-Israeli conflict, Hebrew/Israeli language and culture. The Jewish Studies collections are complemented by strong collections in Slavic Studies, Near Eastern Languages and Literatures, History and Religion Studies, as well as by rare books and manuscripts in the collections of the Lilly Library.
The main catalog of books at Indiana University is IUCAT. Watch the video below if you need help finding e-books in IUCAT.
- IUCAT This link opens in a new window
This link opens in a new window
The Indiana University online catalog.
If you are just starting a research project and need to know some basic information to get started, encyclopedias and historical dictionaries are great tools.
- Encyclopaedia Judaica
This link opens in a new window
Authoritative reference resource for Jewish knowledge and life
- Encyclopedia of Jewish Women
- This link opens in a new window
"This encyclopedia seeks to make available to all who are interested in Jewish history and culture the varied accomplishments of Jewish women and their many contributions to the Jewish historical experience over the course of the past three millennia."
- Holocaust Encyclopedia
- This link opens in a new window
An encyclopedia with extra features concerning the Holocaust and the principal figures involved. - Oxford Bibliographies Online: Jewish Studies
- This link opens in a new window
An extensive bibliography compiled by scholars in Jewish Studies and related fields.
- YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe
- This link opens in a new window
"The only resource of its kind, this encyclopedia provides the most complete picture of the history and culture of Jews in Eastern Europe from the beginnings of their settlement in the region to the present. This website makes accurate, reliable, scholarly information about East European Jewish life accessible to everyone."
Most databases allow you click a box with a name like "scholarly articles," which does a reasonably good job of limiting your results to high-quality, academic articles.
- America: History & Life
- This link opens in a new window
Bibliographic database focusing on the history and life of the United States and Canada, indexing more than 1,800 journals published, dissertations and reviews.
- ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials
- This link opens in a new window
ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials is a combined index to journal articles, book reviews, and collections of essays in all fields of religion, biblical studies, world religions, church history, religious perspectives on social issues.
- Historical Abstracts
- This link opens in a new window
Index to journals, chapters and theses about world history, 1450 to present. - JSTOR
- This link opens in a new window
Provides searchable full-text of historical runs of important scholarly journals in the humanities, arts, sciences, ecology, and business. - Project Muse
- This link opens in a new window
Provides full text access and indexing for e-journals and e-books from a variety of scholarly publishers. Covers the fields of literature and criticism, history, the visual and performing arts, cultural studies, education, political science, gender studies, economics, and many others.
- ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses from around the world, including millions of works from thousands of universities. Each dissertation published since July, 1980 includes a 350-word abstract written by the author. Master's theses published since 1988 include 150-word abstracts. Simple bibliographic citations are available for dissertations dating from 1637.
- RAMBI Index of Articles on Jewish Studies
- This link opens in a new window
Selective bibliography of academic articles covering all of the fields of Jewish studies as well as the study of Eretz Israel and the State of Israel. RAMBI is based largely on the collections of the National Library of Israel. Includes references to articles in Hebrew, Latin, or Cyrillic letters.
Although IU has access to newspapers from around the world, most of our large collections of historical newspapers center on the United States. Check out the "Old News" link below for more non-American newspapers.
- Chronicling America
- This link opens in a new window
Access to information about historic newspapers and select digitized newspaper pages. Search historic newspaper pages from 1789-1963 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present. - Compact Memory
- This link opens in a new window
German-Jewish periodicals published between 1806 and 1938
- Historical Jewish Press
- This link opens in a new window
"This site contains a collection of Jewish newspapers published in various countries, languages, and time periods. We display digital versions of each paper, making it possible to view the papers in their original layout. Full-text search is also available for all content published over the course of each newspaper’s publication."
- Newspapers.com World Collection
- This link opens in a new window
Contains full runs and portions of runs of well-known, regional and state titles to small local newspapers in the United States and other countries. - ProQuest Historical Newspapers
- This link opens in a new window
Digital archive of historical newspapers. Each issue of each title includes the complete paper, cover-to-cover, with full-page and article images. As part of the collection, IU has access to the American Israelite and the Jewish Exponent.
- Union List of Digitized Jewish Historic Newspapers, Periodicals and e-Journals
- This link opens in a new window
Comprehensive list of titles from all over the world, including both freely available websites and sites that require subscriptions (many of which, IUB affiliates can access through IUCAT). Inclusive dates are between the 17th century and the present, with bulk dates in the 19th and 20th centuries.
For most Jewish Studies research, at least through the undergraduate level, you can probably find plenty of sources right in Bloomington (or wherever you are, using your IUB login). In addition to all the physical collections at IU (including the Lilly Library and University Archives), many of which include collections related to Jewish life, IU has paid for access to online databases that include primary sources from all over the world and all periods of human history. Finally, libraries, archives, museums, and other institutions have digitized many of their collections and made them freely available. Contact me if you need help.
I also encourage you to look at the following guide put together by Alexis Hickey in Spring 2021:
- Berman Jewish Policy Archive
- This link opens in a new window
"Placing historical and contemporary materials within the same archive, the BJPA empowers visitors to engage with data sources across space, time, and disciplines. Including both academic and professionally-oriented publications bridges the gap between scholars and practitioners, offering each a view into the work of the other, generating increasingly productive conversations and more useful knowledge." - Center for Jewish History CatalogThe CJH's catalog aggregates results from numerous repositories. Results include both digitized and non-digitized materials, but on the search results screen, under "availability," you can select "available online."
- Jewish Digital Collections and Jewish Study Guides
- This link opens in a new window
This site lists other websites that contain digitized primary source collections.
- Jewish Life in America, c1654-1954
- This link opens in a new window
Covers the history of Jewish communities in America from the arrival of the first Jewish people in the 17th century right through to the mid-20th century. - https://libraries.indiana.edu/databases/airelations
- This link opens in a new window
Searchable, primary documents on the politics, administration, wars, and diplomacy of Palestine, the Independence of Israel, and the Arab-Israeli conflict.
- The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization byCall Number: Wells Library - Stacks -- DS117 .P64 2012ISBN: 9780300190007Publication Date: 2012-Note that as of July 2020, only volumes 6, 8, and 10 have been published. You can also access the encyclopedias for free if you register for an account on the Posen Library website.
A landmark project to collect, translate, and transmit primary material from a momentous period in Jewish culture and civilization, this volume covers what Elisheva Carlebach describes as a period "in which every aspect of Jewish life underwent the most profound changes to have occurred since antiquity." Organized by genre, this extensive yet accessible volume surveys Jewish cultural production and intellectual innovation during these dramatic years, particularly in literature, the visual and performing arts, and intellectual culture. The wide‑ranging collection includes a diverse selection of sources created by Jews around the world, translated from a dozen languages. Representing a tumultuous time of changing borders, demographic shifts, and significant Jewish migration, this anthology explores the range of approaches of Jews, from welcoming to resistant, to the intertwining ideals of enlightenment and emancipation, "the very foundation of the Jewish experience in this period."
- USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive
- This link opens in a new window
The USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive allows users to search through and view the 51,537 video testimonies of survivors and witnesses of genocide currently available in the Archive that were conducted in 61 countries and 39 languages. Initially a repository of Holocaust testimony, the Visual History Archive has expanded to include testimonies from the 1937 Nanjing Massacre in China and the 1994 Rwandan Tutsi Genocide.
- Yiddish Book Center: Digital Library and Collections
- This link opens in a new window
Explore their digital Yiddish library of more than 11,000 titles, and our diverse collections, including contemporary oral histories, lectures, Yiddish audiobooks, and more.