HINDCAST/FORECAST: The YIVO Vilna Digitization Project

HINDCAST/FORECAST: How the YIVO Vilna Digitization Project Helps Us Grasp Our Present and Future

Image: Strashun Library Reading Room, Vilna

No less than miracles, fierce dedication, and surprising ingenuity led to the gathering, safeguarding, and ultimately making widely accessible a most precious collection of Jewish manuscripts and books. 

In January 2022, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research completed the Edward Blank YIVO Vilna Online Collections project, a 7-year initiative to digitize the materials YIVO had collected before WWII which had been looted by the Nazis. 

Now located at YIVO in New York and three Lithuanian institutions, what remains of YIVO’s pre-war collection has been reunited virtually.

 

Director of the YIVO Archives, Dr. Stefanie Halpern, shares the harrowing journey of YIVO’s pre-war collections and the cutting-edge technologies used to digitize them. 

Join Stephanie Halpern for a virtual tour of highlights from the digitized materials, and a demonstration on how to find and access these rare materials online.

 

Recorded live on Zoom, Sunday, May 22, 2022

 

Co-sponsored by the Toronto UJA Committee for Yiddish, the California Institute for Yiddish Culture and Language and Der Nister L.A.