Digital libraries: “Historical Jewish Press” project unveiled

A new project called “Historical Jewish Press” initiated jointly by the National Library of Israel and Tel Aviv University was launched in late December 2010.

The National Library of Israel digitizes thousands of pages from Jewish newspapers from 19th c. up to present days and makes them available online.

The project’s website currently provides access to over 400 000 pages from 20 newspapers in Hebrew, French, English and Hungarian, which used to be inaccessible to users. Full-text search is also available on the website.

Digitized archives include: “Davar”, a newspaper established in Tel Aviv in 1925 by Berl Katznelson which was published between 1925 and 1996; “Ha-Zvi”, founded by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, who revived the Hebrew language in the modern era; “Ha-Magid”, a weekly publication which came out in a number of European towns between mid. 19th c. and beginning of 20th c., and “Ha-Melitz”, the first Jewish weekly in the Tsarist Russia.

The website also makes available digitized issues of “Ha-Yom”, the first daily newspaper in Jewish language, which also came out in the Tsarist Russia, and was published in St. Petersburg between 1886 and 1888, as well as Palestine Post, a predecessor of Jerusalem Post, and all issues of “Maariv” from its foundation up to 1968.

The resource also features Jewish newspapers from France, Germany, Morocco, Egypt and many other countries.

Before being digitized materials were converted into microfilms and now can be found at the National library and other archives worldwide.

This project is a part of the digital revolution which started at the National Library several years ago. The library has been actively involved in digitization of books and other archives which will be then made freely available on Internet.