Librarian's Lobby
by Daniel D. Stuhlman
September 2000
This is my first column as an
independent consultant. My company will be involved in the management of
knowledge. I will have two foci-- advising organization on how to better turn
information into knowledge and the cataloging of Judaica library materials. I
wish every a Shana Tova u-Metukah (happy and sweet New Year) may this year be
one that share something that you learned.
This is an expanded version of
my monthly column. Usually the difference between the print version that is
published for the Chicago Rabbinical Council and the web version is minor.
Changes are usually based on the needs of a different audience. The version
contains more material because I ran out of space in the print version.
Center for
Jewish History
I was in New York over the Labor Day weekend preparing for my new venture. I visited the new Center for Jewish History on West 17th Street in Manhattan. The building actually has entrances
on both 16th and 17th Streets. This new building is just opening to the public this month. The Center is joint effort of YIVO, the Leo Baeck Institute, the American Jewish Historical Society, the American Sephardic Federation and the Yeshiva University Museum. These organizations have performed a great service for students and scholars of Judaica by pulling their resources to form one organization.. The logistical problems to move the library collections were daunting. The American Jewish Historical Society was previously housed on the campus of Brandeis University in Waltham, MA. The other institutions were in New York City.
Like many new buildings, they
are still trying to solve climate control and other technical problems. These
institutions have different roots and missions, but they share a mission to
save and preserve the past in order to educate future generations. To find out
more visit their joint web site : www.centerfor jewishhistory.com/log2.htm.
This site has links to each of the constituent organizations. One of their
joint missions is to act as a resource for the study of Jewish genealogy. They
will shortly have a computer system in operation to help researchers find the
information in any of the constituent libraries. The libraries share a reading
room.
While all four institutions
want to help preserve the Jewish past they complement each other rather than
overlap. YIVO seeks to collect materials in Yiddish and about Jews from Yiddish
speaking countries; the Leo Baeck Institute collects materials concerning
central European and German speaking Jewry; and the American Jewish Historical
Society collects materials about the United States. For current materials
published in the United States all three libraries may want to purchase them;
but for ephemera, manuscripts, and archival materials they would logically go
to one institution based on their collection development policy.
YIVO (Yidisher
Visenshaftlikher Institut) = Institute for Jewish Research
Since I will be working with
YIVO I would like to share a little about the organization's history. (A fuller
story can be found in the Encyclopedia Judaica v. 16.) YIVO was founded
at a conference that took place in Berlin, August 7-12, 1925. Vilna was
selected as its center and YIVO reached its peak in 1935 when they held a
conference attended by leading scholars from the world's Yiddish speaking
communities. By 1940 when the Nazis occupied Vilna, YIVO's library had amassed
over 100,000 volumes and over 100,000 manuscripts and archival items. About 50%
of these items survived the Holocaust and were sent with the help of the U.S.
Army and State Department to the New York headquarters. YIVO's Library is
dedicated to collection, preservation, and study of Eastern European Jewish
culture and the places to where Eastern European Jewry immigrated. Today, the
collection contains over 300,000 printed volumes and over 500,000 non-book
items and includes religious and secular materials that mirror Jewish life in
those countries.
The Vilna Collection is part of
the core collection of the YIVO Library. The Vilna collection includes over
20,000 books from the Mattityahu Strashun Library. (The other surviving
Strashun Library books are now part of the Jewish National Library at the
Hebrew University in Jerusalem.) This collection of rabbinica (mostly in
Hebrew) that belonged to the Strashun Library was cataloged on cards during the
1960's by the late Rabbi Hayim Lieberman.
Mattityahu Strashun, 1819-1885,
was a talmudic scholar born in Vilna. His family was well-to-do and he married
the eldest daughter of the wealthy. Joseph Elijah Eliasberg. He had an
extensive knowledge of philosophy, history and astronomy in addition to his
Jewish scholarship. He was a Jewish communal leader and was appointed to the
Vilna city council. The oldest books in the collection date to the early 16th
century. Since he died childless, he willed his collection of 5,700 books, many
with his marginal annotations, to the Jewish community of Vilna. In addition,
he left money for a building and maintaining
the collection. The first
director of the library was Samuel Strashun, his nephew. The collection was
kept current. In 1928 the library started collecting every book published in
Poland in Hebrew or Yiddish. By 1939 the library contained over 35,000 volumes
and included 150 manuscripts and five incunabula.
I first visited YIVO
when I was library school student in the early 1970's. The institution
was on prestigious, 5th Avenue. The building looked
more like a mansion than a place of learning. I learned about Judaica
librarianship from their librarians in a joint course between Columbia
University and YIVO1 When I learned there the institution already
had a long history of Yiddish scholarship. Their periodicals are important
sources of Jewish scholarship. Their librarians have a long history of
contributing to the field. The late Dina Abramowitcz when she was the director
of the library, edited the list of Yiddish books for the Jewish Books Annual.
Cataloging
Knowledge
There is a source in Torah that
gives us a clue to the need to catalog and organize knowledge. In Parshat
Bereshit (the book of Genesis) we read of the story of creation. After God
created the universe, he separated the light from the darkness and separated
the waters and formed dry land. This is the first act of organizing the world.
Organization of data what cataloging is all about.
Learning is a process that is
usually defined as change in behavior based on experience. Knowledge is the something
that has been learned from experience or another person. When the knowledge is
integrated into the person we say that learning has occurred. Knowledge can be
gained from input to any of our senses. This knowledge is based on information.
Information is interpreted from data and data are formed from symbols such as
letters and numbers. In organizations, one person's data becomes another's
information and one person's information becomes another's knowledge. Knowledge
is the result of integrating information. Each step of the process adds value
to a previous step. The human mind attaches meaning to the unfamiliar. When
confronted with symbols such as letters, numbers, the mind tries to interpret
them and make words. If the word is familiar the mind attaches some linguistic
meaning to the symbols. Based on the knowledge in the person's head words form
and soon the symbols are new information for the person. The difficulty about
writing about this process is that while we observe people working, it is difficult
to determine the dividing line between information and knowledge. Every input
that one of our senses detects is referenced to our experience that is previous
knowledge. For example, the word triangle names a geometric form that
has a definition. However, the word triangle creates a mental image that
is unique for each person.
I would like to choose a
library model to demonstrate how knowledge is saved, cataloged and distributed.
I define books as the frozen knowledge of the author(s). Books are based
on the information, data and experience of the author. The act of writing and
publishing is a "freezing" of this knowledge because in the real
world people are always learning and changing their internal knowledge. A book
enters a collection as information. The cataloger takes the data from the title
page and enters it based on rules into a catalog system. Once in the system the
book is represented by symbols. The book is then labeled and placed on the
shelf at the "address" that the cataloger assigned. If a reader wants
to find that book (s)he looks in the catalog, following the rules for
searching, locates the address of the book and then is able to get the book.
Once the book is read, the frozen knowledge of the author can become part of
the live knowledge of the reader.
Cataloging is both a science
and an art. A process based on rules and practices is a science. A process
applying those rules to the needs of a particular library is an art. Two catalogers
may both follow the rules and create different catalog records that are both
correct. A "cataloger" not following the rules may create a situation
that makes if difficult for readers to find books in the future. Cataloging is
a process to communicate with library users at a future moment. The reader who
understands the rules can find books more easily then those who don't
understand how to use the system. Catalogers are source for information;
reference librarians are the interpreters and guides to information and the end
reader becomes the one who internalizes knowledge. At any moment the librarian
can be a gatherer of data, a distributor of information, and a source of
knowledge.
The difference between chaos
and the world is the act of creation that put order into the universe.
The difference between a collection of books and a library is the organization
and cataloging. The skill of the cataloger is understanding the world of books
and knowledge and the ability to organize and describe them based on rules to
enable readers to find them. This adds value to the books and makes the
collection more valuable.
In future columns I will
continue this discussion on knowledge with more examples. Please do not
hesitate to contact me to give ideas and suggestions for future columns.
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Notes
1. Columbia University and YIVO
have many co-operative efforts in the area of Yiddish studies.
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