Digital Preservation: What do teens know about it?

What do teenagers know about digital preservation?

Learn more on the new Library of Congress digital preservation blog, The Signal.

The first line - "It’s many adult’s worst nightmare: how to entertain and (try to) educate 30 8^th graders for an hour?" - brought back memories.

As co-founder of the Las Vegas (NV) Hebrew High for post-bar/bat mitzvah students, I had major misgivings about teaching family history to a class of eighth-graders. Having taught English to this age group at the Iran-America Society in Teheran long ago, I knew it wasn't easy.

However, the Las Vegas class turned out to be one of the best I've ever had. Students used the major reference works from day one and understood how to navigate the sometimes strange phonetic spellings in Alexander Beider's books. They contacted grandparents and long-lost relatives and asked questions, wrote reports, created family trees and they involved their parents and extended families.

So I was intrigued by digital archivist Butch Lazorchak's post today in The Signal.

He advises that the first thing to do is to try and think like the teens, and used the example of a Florida middle school class trip to Washington, DC.

It wasn't the first time the LOC has worked with students on digital culture. In 2009, high school students from Virginia visited. The “Digital Natives Explore Digital Preservation” video illustrates their knowledge, ideas about preservation and who should do it.

The National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIPP; say it "n-dip") at the LOC has participated in the National Book Festival and hosted Personal Archiving Day events, but there are differences in outreach to adults, teens and eighth-graders. Here's the program that focused on digital photos.

There were some interesting items in a 2010 Pew study of myths about how teens use cell phones and social networks. It indicated that after texting, the most popular features were taking and sharing photos. The middle-school students' program focused on helping them understand "how to capture, describe and preserve their own digital photos," About half the group used digital cameras, while the others used phones.

The split is important, because the primary distribution (and possibly only long-term storage) strategy for many of the phone users was to upload their photos to a social networking site such as Facebook.

We explained some of the issues with using a social network site as a primary storage option (history has shown that those sites don’t stick around forever), and talked about how it’s best to save your photos across a range of devices (thumb drives, CDs, external hard drives, online storage) and geographies (your house in Florida, your friend’s house across town, your grandma’s house in Seattle).

And we were pleasantly surprised by the student’s degree of knowledge on the issues. Most of them recognized that their digital photos were “at-risk” in some way (one had filled her camera by shooting 800 photos in one day and was worried about how to save them when she ran out of space), and many had perfectly reasonable back-up and replication strategies already in place. Our presentation “teased-out” more detail on these strategies, and got both the students and their parental chaperones to think a little harder about saving their photos with something that resembled a long-term strategy.

NDIPP attempts to raise awareness of digital preservation issues and encourage people to take personal action to preserve their own materials in today's absence of comprehensive tools to help them do so. According to the author, "the personal photographs of the students at South Lake could become the valuable cultural heritage materials of tomorrow, but only if the students take care of them first."

Read the complete article at the link above.

LOC: New preservation blog launched

The Library of Congress digital preservation program is now part of the blogosphere, according to an LOC announcement today.

Part of the potential audience for the new blog are genealogists and family history researchers:

"The audience for us to interact with is potentially vast, as we are very interested in personal digital archiving: helping individuals and families preserve their digital photographs and other digital files that document their lives."

The new blog - The Signal - authored by digital initiatives manager Bill LeFurgy, who writes in the initial post that the official program name is the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program, or NDIIPP (say N-DIP).

In 2000, Congress directed the LOC to undertake a national digital preservation program to address the large-scale challenge of digital preservation. Huge amounts of digital content were being created with no print equal, and that some content was needed to create records of the times we live in.

However, the amount of information was larger than what could made accessible. Because so much data could be lost, Congress created NDIIPP to lessen that risk.

Over the last 10 years we have built a national network of collaborative partnerships to help preserve important digital content, build new tools and develop best practices. The partnerships span different communities, including universities, federal and state government agencies and the commercial creative content industry.  This is a new approach. Libraries, archives and other memory institutions traditionally have worked separately to acquire and manage their collections. But digital is different—it calls for a new kind of capacity that is difficult for a single institution to build on its own. The only practicable way forward is collaboration: in building technical infrastructure, in sharing knowledge, in developing best practices and in assigning roles and responsibilities for stewarding digital collections.

Concerning preservation, he writes that technology is the easy part of digital preservation programs, but that social is the harder part. He talks about collaboration and the Internet, and mentions the LOC website digitalpreservation.gov which provides a rich collection of information and resources.

They have spoken to experts, list tools and services and shared global information. Future plans include looking at the spectrum of data, from large scientific databases to modest personal digital collections of documents. Interviews are planned with people from many fields.

Check out the new blog and provide feedback.

Library of Congress: Personal Archiving Day, April 30

The Library of Congress will hold a free public "Pass It On: Personal Archiving Day" on Saturday, April 30.

The event, from 11am-2pm, will provide information about preserving personal and family photographs in digital and non-digital forms. Reservations are not needed.

Library staff will be on hand to talk directly with individuals about how to manage and preserve their pictorial treasures. There will also be videos and printed information for participants.

The event will take place in Room 119 of the Jefferson Building, 1st Street S.E., between Independence Avenue and East Capitol Street. For more information on visiting the LOC, click here.

This event is part of the LOC celebration of Preservation Week (April 24-30), a joint initiative of the Library of Congress, American Library Association, Institute for Museum and Library Services and others. It highlights libraries and other collecting institutions as excellent sources of preservation information.

“It is a great pleasure for us to be able to help families preserve their photograph collections,” said Laura Campbell, Associate Librarian for Strategic Initiatives. “Digital technology in particular provides new challenges and opportunities to keeping photographs accessible over time and across generations.”

Dr. Deanna Marcum, Associate Librarian for Library Services, says ”Many of the collections currently held by the Library of Congress came originally from personal collectors It is in the best interest of the Library to help families preserve memorabilia that help trace the history of our communities and nation.”

Learn more about the event and sign up for free digital preservation updates here.For a short video of the event, click here.

Library of Congress: Szyk Haggadah program, April 4

In the mid-1930s, Polish-Jewish artist Arthur Szyk created a haggadah in the style of medieval illuminated manuscripts.

The Szyk Haggadah will be displayed on Monday, April 4, at a Library of Congress program marking the Abrams publication of a new facsimile edition, with translation and commentary by Rabbi Byron L. Sherwin and Irvin Ungar.

The original Haggadah is housed in the LOC's Rare Book and Special Collections Division.

Ungar's talk - "Arthur Szyk and His Passover Haggadah: A Library of Congress Treasure" - will take place at noon, Monday, April 4, in the African and Middle Eastern Division Reading Room, Room 220, Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First Street SE., Washington, DC. The talk is free and open to the public. Tickets are not required, but seating is limited.

Arthur Szyk (1894–1951) was an acclaimed artist, activist, illuminator and political illustrator. During World War II, his anti-Nazi caricatures were widely published in the United States, most memorably as covers for news magazines such as Time and Collier’s. For almost a decade, Szyk labored to create an elaborately illustrated haggadah that attacked the Nazis, but he could not find anyone willing to take the risk to publish his version of the Passover story. Szyk retold the ancient narrative as if it were an event unfolding in his own time, imagining the Hebrews as Eastern European Jews in need of a modern Exodus to the Land of Israel. His masterpiece was finally published in England in 1940, stripped of its anti-Nazi iconography.

Born of Jewish parents in Lodz, Poland, his early training was in Paris and Cracow. He served as artistic director of the Department of Propaganda for the Polish army regiment quartered in Lodz, 1919-1920. In 1921, he moved to Paris and lived and worked there for 10 years. In 1934, Szyk traveled to the US for exhibitions of his work, such as a Library of Congress exhibit of 38 miniatures commemorating George Washington and the Revolutionary period. In late 1940, after living for some years in the UK, he immigrated to the US.

In 2000, the Library of Congress celebrated the acquisition of several important original works by Szyk with an exhibition in the Swann Gallery titled "Arthur Szyk: Artist for Freedom." The display, which can be viewed online at www.loc.gov/rr/print/swann/szyk, featured 17 representative works, from caricatures of Axis leaders to masterpieces of illumination such as the Szyk Haggadah.

A former pulpit rabbi, Ungar is CEO of antiquarian booksellers Historicana, founded in 1987. He has led the interest in Szyk; curated major museum shows, written and edited several books, and lectured internationally on the artist.

Jewish scholar and ethicist Sherwin has authored or edited 28 books and more than 150 articles and monographs. An Szyk authority, he has served on the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies faculty since 1970.

"The Szyk Haggadah" (128 pages, 48 color illustrations) is available from Abrams and nationwide bookstores and online ($40, hardcover; $16.95, paperback). Copies signed by Ungar will be sold at the April 4 event.

See an LOC online exhibit of some of Szyk's works here.

Library of Congress: 'The Washington Haggadah,' March 23

In just a few weeks, Jews around the world will be reading one or another edition of the Haggadah.

While one of Tracing the Tribe's favorite nostalgic editions is that printed by Maxwell House Coffee, there are many others.

The 15th-century  illuminated Washington Haggadah, in the Library of Congress, is considered an exquisite edition. A new facsimile edition has just been produced by Belknap Press/Harvard University Press this year.

The importance of this work and its new edition will be discussed by David Stern (University of Pennsylvania) and Katrin Kogman-Apel (Ben Gurion University) at noon on Wednesday, March 23. The program will take place in the Mumford Room, sixth floor, James Madison Building, 101 Independence Ave. SE, Washington, DC. The talk is free and open to the public; tickets are not required.

Both speakers wrote essays for the new edition, which will be on sale during the program, and speakers will sign copies.

The Washington Haggadah, held in the Library’s Hebraic Section of the African and Middle Eastern Division, will be on display.

According to a press release about the event, The Washington Haggadah is being discussed on the Books and Beyond page on Facebook, where readers can discuss books and access webcasts of LOC events.

Washington DC: Medieval French Jewish communities, Sept. 20

Author Kirsten A. Fudeman will speak on her new book, "Vernacular Voices: Language and Identity in Medieval French Jewish Communities," on Monday, September 20, at the Library of Congress.

The talk will begin at noon in the African and Middle Eastern Division Reading Room, Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First Street SE, Washington DC. The event is free and open to the public; seating is limited.

Fudeman will discuss the intersection between Hebrew and French and the role of both in shaping cultural identity of the medieval French Jews. Texts explored in the book and in the lecture include commentaries on the Bible, Talmud, prayers and wedding songs, medical texts and cooking recipes.

The book was recently published by the University of Pennsylvania Press; see the table of contents and an interesting excerpt at that link.

Fudeman holds a PhD (Cornell University, 1999) and is currently assistant professor of French language and literature at the University of Pittsburgh. She has authored scholarly articles and received several important grants and awards.

For more information on the program, click here.

Washington DC: 'Gift to Stalin' film, June 23

The Kazakh film - "Gift to Stalin" - will be shown in the Washington, DC area on Wednesday, June 23.

Sasha, a young Jewish orphan, is sent into exile during a Stalinist purge. Losing his grandfather on the long train journey, Sasha is rescued by a gruff widowed rail worker Kasym (the distinguished Kazakh actor Nurzhuman Ikhtimbaev). Kasym takes the boy to his remote village where Sasha becomes part of a surrogate family of other cast outs. A Muslim living by the tenets of ethnic and religious tolerance, Kasym renames Sasha as Sabyr, meaning "humble of heart" in its Arabic origin, but the older man still preserves the boy's Jewish identity. What Sasha/Sabyr finds on the lovingly-filmed, sweeping Kazakh steppes is more than survival in this lyrical, poignant story told through a child's memories. Film clips in Kazakh and Russian with English subtitles.

At noon, the film will be presented at the Library of Congress (Mumford Room,6th Floor, Madison Building), and at the Magen David Sephardic Congregation (Rockville, Maryland) at 7pm.

From the website of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival:

In 1949, railcars holding Jews and other deportees creep eastward into oblivion. Or is it? For young Sasha, salvation comes through a rubric of chance, defiance and love. His enforced rebirth finds him surrounded by a makeshift new clan: his savior and new grandfather, Kasym (veteran actor Nurzhuman Ikhtimbaev), who is Muslim; Verka, the wife of a traitor; Ezhik, a Polish resister; and a gang of orphans—a wilderness family with deep bonds despite habitual harassment from authorities. Rare news comes from Moscow announcing a children’s contest celebrating Stalin’s 70th birthday. If Sasha’s original gift wins, he hopes to achieve his parents’ freedom. Decades pass, and Sasha questions history and his fate: “Who are you in the land of your God if a part of your soul was left behind?” Gift’s allegorical ending will linger long in your heart and mind, likely to raise questions, yet perhaps answer others, such as Kasym’s early query, “Whose flock are you from?"

The screening is in cooperation with the European Division and Hebrew Language Table of the LOC with the Washington Jewish Film Festival and the Embassy of Kazakhstan.

The LOC event includes clips of the film and a lecture by producers Boris Cherdabayev and Aliya Uvalzhanova.

The complete film will be screened at Magen David, along with a discussion by the filmmakers.

Both events are free to the public.

Cherdabayev and Uvalzhanova founded Aldongar Productions Kazakhstan in 2006. Their mission is to preserve the cultural and historical legacy of the country, which has a history of tolerance and diversity, as exemplified by its Jewish community with a history of some 2,500 years.

Library of Congress: Yiddish, Jewish folksongs

The Canada Collection in the Archive of Folk Culture at Library of Congress (Washington, DC) includes the three parts of the famous Ruth Rubin Collection of Yiddish Folksong and Folklore.


The collections include song title, singer and recording location.

Part I (AFS 13,504-13,553) includes 50 7-inch tapes (about 25 hours) with Chassidic, children's games and songs, ballads, humorous, lullabies, Zionist, and other types of songs recorded primarily in Montreal, Toronto and New York by Rubin with additional recordings in London, England and Tel Aviv.

Part II (AFS 14,516-14,555) runs about 20 hours, primarily recorded 1947-67 in New York City, Montreal, Toronto, London and Tel Aviv.

This part offers songs created inside and outside of America, mixed language songs, dancing and drinking songs, love songs, ballads, soldiers and wars, Hebrew, Yiddish, World War II, Yiddish art songs; songs from Europe, USSR and the US.

Part III includes 31 7-inch tapes recorded 1950s-1960s by Rubin in New York, Canada and Israel, and by Norman Cazden in Connecticut 1954-1956.

Read more detailed information about the recordings here.

Texas: LOC spotlights Houston Jewish Herald (1908-1911)

The only thing better than a general historic newspaper - for Jewish family historians - is a Jewish historic newspaper.

This is one of the best ways to find out about the Jewish communities where our immigrant ancestors lived, as well as additional generations. Sometimes the paper was originally in Yiddish, and later added English as generations had forgotten how to read Yiddish.

These ethnic papers covered local issues and named local citizens in a way that the general press did not. They detailed birthdays, weddings, visitors, children leaving for college, burials and other events.

The Library of Congress' Chronicling America offers many searchable Jewish papers, which you can browse here. Browse issues here http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn93068209/issues/.

The LOC recently spotlighted the Houston Jewish Herald (1908-1911, 1,500 searchable pages). Today it is the Jewish Herald-Voice.
The paper also included sermons, editorials, commentaries and articles on events of national and international interest, information on local Jewish organizations and more. From the beginning, he included photographs, which make for a very interesting pictoral record of the community.

Founded in 1908 by Edgar Goldberg, The Jewish Herald was “a weekly publication, devoted to matters of interest to the Hebrew citizens of Houston.” In its first year, the paper was published every Friday, on eight pages measuring 10 x 13 inches each. By the end of 1910, The Jewish Herald had expanded to eight pages measuring 13 x 17 inches, and the paper’s circulation had reached 1,150. Goldberg published the Herald through the Herald Printing Company, and the paper initially cost $1.00 for an annual subscription.

The first issue of The Jewish Herald appeared on September 24, 1908 (in the Jewish calendar year 5668, as stated on the nameplate), but the paper had its origins in a news bulletin that Goldberg sent to the Jewish community in April 1908. At that time, Houston could count approximately 1,700 Jewish residents and two Jewish congregations. Goldberg’s bulletin stated that the community should keep informed of current events throughout the world, and especially of developments within the growing Jewish community. He proposed an “Anglo-Jewish weekly which would chronicle the news affecting the Jews of Texas.”

Other searchable Jewish newspapers available include:

• The Jewish Reformer. (New York, New York)1886-???? (English, German) 
• The National Jewish Daily. ([Van Nuys, California) 1986-1988
• The Jewish Post. (Indianapolis, Indiana) 1933-1946
• The Jewish Journal. (San Francisco, Caliifornia) 1928-1932
• The Jewish Exponent (Philadelphia, Pennsylvaniaa.) 1887-????
• The Texas Jewish Post. (Fort Worth, Texas) 1947-current
• The Youngstown Jewish Times. (Youngstown, Ohio) 1935-1987
• The Jewish Monitor. (Birmingham, Alabama) 1948-1980
• The Jewish Times. (Brookline, Massachusetts) 1951-1983
• The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle. (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) 1921-current
• The Jewish Chronicle. (Worcester, Massachusetts 1976-1980
• Las Vegas Israelite. (Las Vegas, Nevada) 1966-current
• Idishe velṭ = The Jewish World. (Cleveland, Ohio) 1913-1952  (English, Yiddish)
• The Boston Jewish Times. (Brookline, Massachusetts) 1983-2001
• The Jewish Chronicle-Leader. (Worcester, Massachusetts) 1980-1992
• The Jewish Voice. (St. Louis, Missouri) 1888-1933 (English, Yiddish) 
• The Iowa Jewish News. (Des Moines, Iowa) 1932-1952
• Der Ṿegṿayzer = The Jewish indicator. (Piṭtsburg, Pennsylvania) 1924-1930 (English, Hebrew, Yiddish) 
• Der Fihrer = The Jewish leader. (Pitṭsburg, Pennsylvania) 1930-1938 (English, Yiddish) 
• Di Idishe posṭ = Jewish post. (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) 1903-1909 (English, Hebrew, Yiddish) 
• Jewish Pictorial Leader. (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) 1949-19??
• Der Ṿegṿayzer = The Jewish leader. (Pitṭsburg, Pennsylvania) 1938-194? (English, Yiddish) 
• The Jewish Times and Observer. (San Francisco, Calififornia) 1879-19?? (English, German) 
• Jewish Weekly News. (Springfield, Massachusetts) 1945-199?
• Las Vegas Israelite of Nevada. (Las Vegas, Nevada) 1965-1966
• The Jewish Chronicle. (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) 1962-current
• The Southern Jewish Times. (Birmingham, Alabama) 192?-????
• The National Jewish Post. (Indianapolis, Indiana) 1946-1957
• The National Jewish Post and Opinion. (Indianapolis, Indiana) 1957-1966
• The Indiana Jewish Post and Opinion. (Indianapolis, Indiana) 1966-current
• Di Idishe shṭime ([Reading, Pennsylvania) 1922-1929  (English, Yiddish)
• The Journal. (Salem, Massachusetts) 1986-199?
• The Jewish Journal. (Youngstown, Ohio) 1987-current
• Heritage. (Los Angeles, Calififornia) 1954-1958
• Hakol (Allentown, Pennsylvania) 1976-current
• Monthly Reporter. (Madison, Wisconsin) 19??-????
• Jewish Reporter. (Framingham, Massachusetts) 1970-current
• The Delaware Valley Jewish Reporter. (Morrisville, Pennsylvania) 198?-current
• Hayom (Portland, Maine) 19??-current
• Forward (St. Louis, Missouri) 19??-19??  (English, Hebrew)
• The Jewish Tribune. (St. Louis, Missouri) 1879-1884
• The people's friend = Der Volksfreund = Der Vosterer folksfrend. (Worcester, Massachusetts) 1913-19?? (Yiddish)
• Der Vosterer idisher folks-frend = The Worcester Jewish people's friend. (Worcester, Massachusetts) 19??-19?? (English, Yiddish)
• Every Friday. (Cincinnati, Ohio) 1927-1965
• The Jewish Digest. (Miami, Florida) 1926-????
• The Jewish Chronicle. (Worcester, Massachusetts) 1992-current
• Ṭeglakhe prese (Los Angeles, California) 1934-19?? (English, Yiddish)
• Der Yidisher siṭizen = The Hebrew citizen. (Boston, Masschusetts) 1893-1??? (Yiddish)
• Folḳs-tsayṭung = Folks-Zeitung (Los Angeles, California) 1936-19?? (English, Yiddish)
• Di Press (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) 19??-19?? (English, Yiddish)

Search the papers - at the link above - where your ancestors lived and see what you can find.

There are many additional papers focusing on other ethnicities.

Washington DC: LOC, Latin-American Jewish Studies, May 17

Seeing this program with the mention of the Library of Congress' Hispanic Division reminded me of an incident quite a number of years ago.

Our daughter was going to visit one of her friends, who was studying Spanish in Seville. The two were planning to visit, among many other places, a town near Zaragoza which might have had a connection to our family's Sephardic ancestry.

I called the LOC and spoke to a very helpful young man in the Hispanic Division, and gave him the name of the town. He looked it up in an 18th century gazetteer, and among other interesting items, it noted "Hay muchos lobos y zorros" (there are many wolves and foxes).

When daughter and friend took a taxi out to the village from the city, the driver told them to be careful because "hay muchos lobos y zorros." The two students, of course, were rather amused, and the driver was understandably confused.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

In any case, "Jewish-Latin American Historiography: The Challenges Ahead" is the May 17 lecture at the LOC. An increasingly popular area of academic inquiry, many institutions are offering related classes.

History professors Raanan Rein and Jeffrey Lesser will present the free joint lecture at noon, Monday, May 17, in the Mary Pickford Theater, (third floor, LOC's James Madison Building, 101 Independence Ave. SE, Washington, DC).

It is jointly sponsored by the Library’s Hispanic Division and the Hebrew Language Table in cooperation with the Embassy of Argentina and the Embassy of Israel. Reservations are not required.

Tel Aviv University's Raanan Rein is the Sourasky Professor of Latin American and Spanish History and head of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for International and Regional Studies. Author and editor of more than 20 books and several dozen academic journal articles, he's co-president of the Latin American Jewish Studies Association and a member of Argentina’s National Academy of History.

Emory University's Jeffrey Lesser is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of History and director of the Tam Institute for Jewish Studies. The author of "A Discontented Diaspora: Japanese-Brazilians and the Meanings of Ethnic Militancy, 1960-1980," "Negotiating National Identity: Minorities, Immigrants and the Struggle for Ethnicity in Brazil" and "Welcoming the Undesirables: Brazil and the Jewish Question," he was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the University of São Paulo and held the Fulbright Distinguished Chair of the Humanities at Tel Aviv University (2006-7). He is the former president of the Conference on Latin American History..

The Library’s Hispanic collections comprise more than 13 million items and are the most extensive such collections in the world.

Recognized as one of the world’s foremost centers for the study of Hebrew and Yiddish materials, the Library’s African and Middle Eastern Division holdings include works in Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino, Judeo-Persian, Judeo-Arabic, Aramaic, Syriac, Coptic and Amharic. The section’s holdings are especially strong in the areas of the Bible and rabbinics, liturgy, Hebrew language and literature and Jewish history.

May is Jewish Heritage Month

Since 2006, May has been American Jewish Heritage Month, recognizing more than 350 years of Jewish contributions to American culture.

The Library of Congress offers a portal for activities and events surrounding this celebration.

Partners in this collaborative effort are The Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Click here for related exhibits and collection links.

Events  include:

May 4-26
First Person: Conversations with Holocaust Survivors
1pm, Tuesdays/Wednesdays, USHMM.

May 5
Keynote Address: Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) delivers the keynote address for the LOC’s celebration of Jewish American Heritage Month. LOC.

May 6
Lecture: “American Jews and the Myth of Silence after the Holocaust” 2010 Monna and Otto Weinman Annual Lecture. USHMM.

May 10
Book Talk: Author Robin Gerber, “Barbie and Ruth: The Story of the World's Most Famous Doll and the Woman Who Created Her.” LOC.

May 13
Lecture: "Child’s Play: The Judaization of Adolescence in 20th-Century America," by Jenna Weissman Joselit (Charles E. Smith Professor of Judaic Studies; George Washington University; former Distinguished Visiting Scholar, John W. Kluge Center, LOC), LOC.

May 14
Conversation: with Holocaust survivor Charles Stein, USHMM.

Other exhibits:

-- A Forgotten Suitcase: The Mantello Rescue Mission (USHMM). The story of George Mandel, a Hungarian Jewish businessman who befriended a Salvadoran diplomat, Colonel José Arturo Castellanos, in the years leading up to World War II. After Castellanos was named El Salvador’s Consul General in Geneva, he appointed Mandel, who had assumed a Spanish-sounding version of his last name, “Mantello,” to serve as the Consulate’s first secretary. Learn about this little-known story.

-- Jews in America (National Endowment for the Humanities)

-- Jewish Veterans of World War II

See the websites of the partner organizations for more events.

Your Tweets are History!

How Tweet it is - for eternity!

If you have ever sent a Tweet, your descendants will now have an even better picture of what you were like, your life, your interests.

For genealogists, this may be quite helpful to future generations who really want to know what their grandparent had for lunch.

Others do not feel quite the same.

Read on for the upside, and the down, of this recent development.

The Library of Congress, according to Matt Raymond's blog post, has acquired the entire Twitter archive. Every 140-character-or-less tweet that you have ever sent since Twitter launched in March 2006 - in anger, in humor, in simple status updates - will now be available at the LOC.

How many are there? Twitter gets more than 50 million - Twitter says some 55 million - tweets a day, totalling billions of the darned little things.

It was announced to the Twitter community via the LOC's own feed (@librarycongress); the LOC's feed has more than 50,000 followers:

Twitter posted the information on its own blog.

Library to acquire ENTIRE Twitter archive -- ALL public tweets, ever, since March 2006! Details to follow. (11:36 AM Apr 14th via web Retweeted by 100+ people)

That blog post also mentioned Google Replay.

"... It is our pleasure to donate access to the entire archive of public Tweets to the Library of Congress for preservation and research. It's very exciting that tweets are becoming part of history. It should be noted that there are some specifics regarding this arrangement. Only after a six-month delay can the Tweets will be used for internal library use, for non-commercial research, public display by the library itself, and preservation. ..."

"... Today we are also excited to share the news that Google has created a wonderful new way to revisit tweets related to historic events. They call it Google Replay because it lets you relive a real time search from specific moments in time. ..."

Read about Google Replay here. Although it currently only goes back a few months, it will include the very first Tweets ever created.

Raymond indicated that soon there will be a LOC press release with even more details, focusing on scholarly and research implications.

Other facts gleaned from these announcements: the LOC holds 167 terabytes of web-bsed information. That includes legal blos, national office candidates websites and Congressional members' websites.

For positive and negative reactions to this development, see the LOC post comments at the link above. Remarks included: Awesome, who owns the copyright (Twitter or the re-Tweeter)?, what right does the government have to a private individual's Tweets, is the 167 terabytes backed up?, tax dollars at work, waste of time and money, banal and narcissistic, no warning?, awful, access policies?, incredibly valuable resource, be careful what you Tweet online, what happens if a public Twitter account goes private?, can't put the genie back in the bottle, who owns non-US-generated Tweets? and more.

As should always be the case, be careful as to what private information you post on any social media networking site, such as Facebook, Twitter or others.

Washington DC: NARA Genealogy Fair, April 14-15

The Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Washington will participate in the Sixth Genealogy Fair sponsored by the National Archives and Record Administration (NARA) on Wednesday-Thursday, April 14-15, in Washington DC.

Admission is free for the two full days of lectures and exhibits at the National Archives Research Center Lobby and Pennsylvania Avenue Plaza. National Archives Building, 700 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington DC. Enter on Pennsylvania Avenue.

For the full NARA Announcement, program schedule, directors and more, click here. For more information on the JGSGW, click here.

Speakers include historian at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Zack Wilske; professional genealogists Susannah Brooks, Elizabeth K. Kerstens, Marie V. Melchiori, and Thomas Shawker M.D.; and National Archives experts Patrick Connelly, Rebecca Crawford, Damani Davis, John Deeben, Claire P. Kluskens, Trevor Plante, Constance Potter, Mary Frances Ronan, Rebecca Sharp, Katherine Vollen, and Reginald Washington.

Guest exhibitors include the Library of Congress, Washington DC Family History Center, FamilySearch, Federation of Genealogical Societies, and local county genealogical societies.

Programs will run from 9:30am-4:30pm both days and will showcase the diversity of Federal records located at the National Archives as resources for family history research. Speakers include National Archives staff, historians, and genealogy professionals. The fair will provide information and guidance for experienced genealogy professionals and novices alike. The event is presented in partnership with the Foundation for the National Archives and with support from Ancestry.com.

Sessions include workshops on records relating to minority and ethnic groups including African Americans, Chinese, German, Irish, Japanese, Native Americans, and women, as well as a session on DNA genealogy testing, and an evening program on the new genealogy-based TV series “Who Do You Think You Are?”

National Archives staff will demonstrate how to use databases including the Archival Research Catalog (ARC) and Access to Archival Databases (AAD). Staff at the “Help! I’m Stuck” table will be available to assist researchers.

See the Complete schedule for Day 1 - Wednesday, April 14; and the Complete schedule for Day 2 - Thursday, April 15. View the condensed schedule for both days, showing session titles, times and locations. See the map of the fair, showing the locations of guest genealogy exhibitors, NARA genealogy exhibitors,and sessions.

Guest genealogy exhibitors include many archival, historical, libraries exhibitors, NGS, FGS, ethnic societies, and more - see the list at the link above.

Readers in the Washington DC area may be interested in other regional spring genealogy meets in addition to the NARA event:

April 10 - The Mid-Atlantic Germanic Society - Bowie, Maryland - brochure
April 10 - The Family History Institute of Southwest Virginia - Wytheville - brochure
April 16-17, 2010 - The Virginia Genealogical Society 50th Anniversary Conference - Richmond - brochure

Like to plan ahead? The JGSGW will host the 2011 IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy at the Grand Hyatt Hotel (Washington, DC) from August 14-19, 2011.

Library of Congress: Indian, Israeli book talk, March 31

"Being Indian, Being Israeli: Migration, Ethnicity and Gender in the Jewish Homeland" is the title of a book talk by Maina Chawla Singh on Wednesday, March 31.

The event begins at noon in the Asian Reading Room Foyer in the Jefferson Building.

In contemporary Israel, the bulk of Indian Jews live in Israeli periphery, where they were settled by the state from the 1950s to early 1970s.

For the first time, this book presents a deeply researched analysis of three Jewish communities from India, studying them holistically as Indian-Israelis with shared histories of migration, acculturation and identity in the Jewish Homeland.

Based on fieldwork and ethnographic research conducted 2005-2008 among Indian Jews across Israel, the book reflects the authors deep engagement and familiarity with Israeli society and the complexities of ethnicity and class that underlie the cleavages within Israeli Jewish society.

Maina Chawla Singh is Associate Professor, University of Delhi. From 2005-2008, she researched and lectured at Bar Ilan, Haifa and Tel Aviv universities. In 2008, she was Scholar-in-Residence at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and, in 2009, was a Fellow at Schusterman Center for Israel Studies, Brandeis University. Currently, she is Scholar-in-Residence at American University, Washington DC.

The talk is sponsored by the LOC's Asian Division, the Asian Division Friends Society and the Embassy of India.

For more information, send an email.

Webcast: Dr. Mark Ozer on the 'Litvak Legacy'

Calling all Litvaks - and everyone else - to a great webcast by author Dr. Mark N. Ozer of "The Litvak Legacy."

Ozer spoke at the Library of Congress on October 15, 2009; view the 54-minute talk here.

His talk focused on his book, which documents the contributions of Lithuanian Jews to the English-speaking world and Israel.

From the 1880s to the 1920s, an estimated one million Lithuanian Jews (Litvak) left their native Lita, on the western edge of the Russian Empire, due to the anti-semitism of the Czars. They emigrated to the United States and other countries throughout the world.

He is introduced on the webcast by the LOC's Peggy Pearlstein of the Hebraic Section, one of the world’s important centers for the study of Hebrew and Yiddish materials.

She personally assisted Tracing the Tribe to find the books of poems by our cousin Leib Borisovich Talalay, a Yiddish poet killed in the Minsk Ghetto uprising in 1941. The two books were at the LOC and Tracing the Tribe received copies of both. The poems provided many details, confirming family and places.

A Boston native Dr. Mark N. Ozer MD, lives in Washington, D.C. He studied modern European history as a Harvard undergrad and, since his retirement as a Georgetown University clinical neurology professor, he has written and lectured extensively on the history of cities through the world.

He's also authored or edited nine books on health and learning issues, and is currently working on a book on Massachusetts Avenue.

Library of Congress: Yiddish radio webcast

Scholar Henry Sapoznik of the Yiddish Radio Project spoke on the Yiddish radio phenomenon at the Library of Congress.

View the webcast - "Hear, O Israel: Yiddish-American Radio 1925-1955" (recorded in October 2009) - here.

Sapoznik says Yiddish radio existed only in America. At one time, 180 stations were broadcasting (1925-1955) in mame loshen; 25 in New York. Most were in large cities like New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago, but Yiddish programs were also broadcast in Memphis, Dallas, Salt Lake City and Sioux City, Iowa

While some stations reached a large geographical area, one small 50-watt station in Brooklyn broadcast from a clothing store. If they opened the window, he said, they'd reach more people!

The lecture offers a glimpse of the most memorable and powerful moments in this nearly lost world of ethnic American broadcasting.

In the 1940s, the New York radio stations provided a place for the community's diversity to show. Programs included cantorial music (and even female cantors, who couldn't then sing in synagogues but reached listeners on the radio), pop music, quiz shows (with Victor Packer), rabbinical advice programs, live Yiddish theater acts, man-on-the-street interviews to the news of the day in verse (with Zvee Scooler) and much more.

To hear 26 gems from these shows, click here.

In 1933, the first-ever broadcast court program was House of Justice, with Rabbi Rubin, who listened to problems listeners brought to him. It was a first time for public mediation.

Yiddish radio also kept Yiddish theater alive. One anecdote concerned a series, "Men Without Eyes," the story of a girl disfigured in a fire and married off to a blind man. One episode announced there would be a live wedding and invited listeners to attend. Not only did they come, but they also brought wedding gifts!

According to Sapoznik, the radio took a folk culture and adapted it to a popular culture. And there were shows that showed how people really interacted in their own language.

An announcement was made on one station that Mr. Goldberg was 111. There was a musical interlude, and the announcer returned with a correction. Goldberg was ill, not 111 years old.

Commercials were important, giving local businesses and local products an opportunity to be a patrons of the arts, to buy air time to support specific shows.

Do you remember My-T-Fine pudding? It was one show's sponsor. Usually the ad was for chocolate pudding. One day, the company announced a new flavor, nut-chocolate. Of course, it was broadcast in Yiddish. Listeners called in and asked "If it is NOT chocolate, so what flavor is it?" Accents and language were everything.

Another popular show was "The Jewish Philosopher" (Der Pilosof), the Dr. Phil of his day - even though the supposed letters from listeners were written by his brother-in-law. What was more interesting was that St. Joseph Aspirin, a national product, was the sponsor.

Manischewitz sponsored the Jewish Children's Hour. Its producer had seven shows running simultaneously. It focused on Yiddish cultural education in New York among listeners who came from various communities (Yiddish, religious, social, etc.). Sholom Segunda was its musical director, and he wrote "Bei Mir bist du schoen."

"Song Book" aired Yiddish songs and compiled a book of favorites for their audience. If a listener sent in a postcard, s/he would receive the songbook. It may have been the first audience survey and done on a very low budget. It helped the show to understand its audience size.

Some announcers, like Zvee Scooler, read the news in verse. mixing daily folk and culture life with the responsibilities of a news show. This wasn't found in mainstream media.

Read more about the Yiddish Radio Project and view the 57-minute webcast by Sapoznik.

Sapoznik is a record producer (four Grammy nominations), a radio documentarian, an author, and a performer of traditional Yiddish and American music. He received a 2002 Peabody award for his 10-week National Public Radio series on the history of Jewish broadcasting, The Yiddish Radio Project, the 2000 ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for Music Scholarship for his book "Klezmer! Jewish Music from Old World to Our World," and an Emmy nomination for his score to the documentary film, "The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg." He founded the Max and Frieda Weinstein Archives of Recorded Sound at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, as well as Living Traditions' annual KlezKamp: The Yiddish Folk Arts Program.

Video: Yiddish melodies in swing

"Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen" - one of the greatest Yiddish songs - is performed by a host of performers of all backgrounds via this clip from the Yiddish Radio Project.

Listen here to A musical montage of various recordings of "Bei Mir" by Guy Lombardo, Ella Fitzgerald, Benny Goodman (who played it at Carnegie Hall), Lee Marjane, Zarah Leander, Felix & His Crazy Cats, the Lennon Sisters, Jimmy Rushing, Louis Prima and Judy Garland.

Recorded by almost every every pop and jazz artist, translated into many languages, it was also a hit in Hitler's Germany, "until the Nazi Party discovered that its composer was a Jew, and that the song's title was Yiddish rather than a south German dialect."

Listen to a 16-minute NPR documentary on the Project, focused on Yiddish Melodies in Swing, sponsored by the Manischewitz Company. The program ran for nearly 20 years, from 1938, when it had a large studio with a live audience of 1,000 and a large orchestra - all of which dwindled through the years.

Don't miss the exhibit about crooner Seymour Rexite (originally Rechtzeit - for the genealogists reading this!) and listen to his Yiddish versions of "Surrey with a Fringe on Top/Oh, What a Beautiful Morning," 1948; "Tea for Two," (with Miriam Kressyn), c1950; "Love and Marriage," (with Miriam Kressyn) c1950; "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," 1954; Barbasol jingle, 1948; and the Ajax jingle, 1952.

In "Love and Marriage," note that "horse and carriage" are now geyt tzuzamen vi zup un knaydlakh (go together like soup and matzoh balls).

There's much more on this Yiddish radio phenomenon as the Library of Congress has recently posted a video presentation on the topic by scholar Henry Sapoznik of the Yiddish Radio Project, recorded October 14. 2009. This presentation is detailed in another Tracing the Tribe post.

Washington DC: Jews of Brazil program, Oct. 20

The Library of Congress will host Daniel R. Pinto of the Embassy of Brazil for an illustrated lecture on the Jews of Brazil at noon Tuesday, October 20.

The free program is open to the public and is sponsored by the LOC's African and Middle East Division (which incorporates the Hebraic Section) and the Hispanic Division.

Pinto was born in Rio de Janeiro to Egyptian Jewish refugees. He attended Rio's French School and earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Candido Mendes University. Prior to joining the Brazilian Foreign Service in 1999, he worked in the tourist, health care and banking industries. He has been posted at the Brazilian Embassy in Washington since 2006, and follows intellectual property and trade policy issues.

The history of the Jews in Brazil is long and complex. Jewish settlers came to Brazil in 1500, fleeing persecution in Portugal in the wake of the Spanish Inquisition. Under Dutch rule, the Jews of Brazil worked on sugar plantations and were allowed to practice their religion. They established a synagogue in Recife in 1636, the first synagogue in the Americas.

Less than two decades later Brazil fell under Portuguese rule, which caused many Jews to leave the country. Some of these refugees fled to New Amsterdam (New York), founding the first Jewish community in America in 1654.

When a Portuguese royal decree abolished discrimination against Jews in 1773, Jews began to return to Brazil. By 1920, more than 7,000 Jews lived in Brazil. More than 100,000 Jews—less than .01 percent of the population—live in Brazil today.

The program will be held in the African and Middle Eastern Division (AMED) Reading Room, Room 220 of the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First Street S.E., Washington, D.C.