This is a selective guide to print and electronic reference sources in Jewish and Israel Studies available in the University of Maryland Libraries' collections, but some free Internet sources are also included.
The Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Studies is a center for research and study of Judaism in all its complexity. Our multi-disciplinary center boasts a faculty with expertise from across the humanities, excellent library resources, and a vibrant student life.
The Joseph and Alma Gildenhorn Institute for Israel Studies is dedicated to the study of Israel in all its variety, but also to presenting political, cultural and general interest programs featuring Israel and its place in the Middle East.
Transliteration is the practice of converting a text from one writing system into another in a systematic way. In the library word is it used to describe non-Roman characters into Roman alphabet. You will find how to transcribe Hebrew letters into English in Hebrew and Yiddish Transliteration Table. This link is to the scanned text of the 1997 edition of the "ALA-LC Romanization Tables: Transliteration Schemes for Non-Roman Scripts," approved by the Library of Congress and the American Library Association. These tables were developed for use when the consistent transliteration of non-Roman script (e.g. Hebrew) into the Roman alphabet is needed, for example, in order to catalog non-Roman materials.
The multilingual Jewish and Israel Studies collection at the University of Maryland is one of the jewels in the Libraries, research and teaching tool for students and faculty, built through patient planning, steady work, and close cooperation between campus units. Thanks to fundraising and collecting efforts by faculty and the Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Studies, as well as special efforts by the Libraries’ staff, the collection is now one of the strongest in the mid-Atlantic region and the country as a whole.
The Jewish and Israel Studies collection is spread through almost every one of the libraries on campus. There are books, journals, periodicals and newspapers, music scores, video, and audio recordings, microform collections of primary sources, facsimile copies of historical documents, manuscripts, and pamphlets. Holdings are strong in most of the core areas of Jewish and Israel Studies: religion, biblical studies, Talmud, halakha (law) and rabbinic thought, philosophy and kabbalah, Jewish and Israeli history, the history of the Holocaust, literature and criticism, music and performing arts, film studies, linguistics, the culture and politics of Israel and so on. Materials in many languages— English, Hebrew, Aramaic, Yiddish, Ladino, Russian, Polish, German, French, Spanish, Italian, and even Bukharin—provide direct access to the broad cultural product of Jewish life in many different lands over the millennia. Musical, literary, and dramatic creativity are represented in collections devoted to Yiddish and Israeli theater, Israeli cinema, literature, music, philosophy, linguistics, the Holocaust, and the state of Israel, just to name a few.
Materials from all over the world—the U.S., Israel, all the countries of Europe as well as most of Latin America, and even northern and South Africa are to be found in McKeldin, the branch libraries, and Hornbake Special Collections. Much of the materials, including primary source collections, journals, and books, are available in electronic format. The strengths of the collection are in general collections, although there are some rare and archival materials. The Libraries are open to the general public for in-house use.
