Judaica: Online Catalogue of the Materials on the History and Culture of the Polish Jews

"Judaica: Online Catalogue of the Materials on the History and Culture of the Polish Jews" is an innovative, bilingual database, which enables easy and functional search of information concerning Jewish history and culture listed in the inventories of Małopolska regional libraries and archives.

The project is conducted at the Institute of Jewish Studies at Jagiellonian University by a team led by dr hab. Adam Kaźmierczyk. It is an effect and continuation of many years of research done by the workers of the Interdepartmental Institute of the History and Culture of Jews (later the Chair of Jewish Studies at Jagiellonian University), which were conducted under the supervision of dr. Andrzej K. Link-Lenczowski.

Judaica is one of two online database projects relating to the history of the Jewish community in the Republic of Poland (the second one is the Database of Materials for the History of Jewish Self-government) carried out by the Institute of Jewish Studies at Jagiellonian University. Combining the the idea of modern storage of information on cultural heritage with the functional work tool, the catalogue is a response to the growing need to obtain quick information. The uniqueness of the project lies in the fact that it provides the ability to accurately search not only the titles and document storage places, but also the content of the abstracts.

Judaica Online Catalogue is created for the scientific workers, students and all lovers of history and culture of the Jews both from Poland and abroad.

Source material

The examined source material comes mainly from the collections of the National Archives in Krakow and its subsidiaries, the Jagiellonian Library, the Czartoryski Library, the Library of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Polish Academy of Sciences in Krakow, as well as collections of the ecclesiastical institutions. The chronological range of the sources covers the period from the fourteenth to the twentieth century. Research results are gradually introduced to the database, which is also gradually supplemented with lists of documents from different eras. In the future work we plan the expansion of the Catalogue and additional research, which would expand the scope of collections outside the Małopolska and make the Catalogue more nationwide.

Opinions and comments on the Catalogue and its expansion as well as proposals should be addressed to: baza-judaika@uj.edu.pl