Sunday, February 8, 2009

Yiddish Literature On-Line

Although I don't know any Yiddish, I was happy to see this morning in Friday's New York Times (courtesy David Meadows' Explorator):

More than 10,000 works in Yiddish — perhaps more than half of all that was ever published in the language — are now accessible online as part of a joint project between the National Yiddish Book Center, based in Amherst, Mass., and the Internet Archive in San Francisco, the two institutions announced on Friday. The scanning began more than 10 years ago as part of a $5 million effort to create the Steven Spielberg Digital Library, said Aaron Lansky, founder and president of the book center.

I was interested to see that those responsible recognize that some people prefer print, because the page linked above adds:

In addition, we can provide you with used copies and reprints of most Yiddish titles at nominal cost. To check availability, please email us at orders@bikher.org, or phone us at 413-256-4900, x196.

I probably would have seen notice of this on Friday except that due to AT&T's poor service my Internet access had been out for most of the last two weeks until Friday afternoon and I had a great deal of catching up to do. I'm in the process of switching all my announcement and discussion list addresses to my Gmail address in the expectation I'll switch providers if it happens again.

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