Dear Safranim, I'm forwarding our most recent update that was sent to friends of Footprints and announcing our 2018 "Incunabula Year." If you curate a collection that includes Hebrew incunabula and would like to work with us (especially in the Americas, which will not be covered by our MEI partnership), please do be in touch ([email protected], or to my Columbia email: [email protected])!
My very best, Michelle Michelle Chesner Norman E. Alexander Librarian for Jewish Studies Columbia University Co-Director, Footprints: Jewish Books Through Time and Place <http://footprints.ccnmtl.columbia.edu> [image: final_footprints_logo_transparent (2).png] November 2017 Dear friends and partners of the Footprints project: The past six months have been particularly eventful, with new partnerships, grants, and an explosion of data into the site. At last check, we have 3426 footprints in 1691 copies of 1210 imprints from 833 literary works. And the data grows daily thanks to institutions and individual contributors around the world. Our first venture into sustained library partnership has been a great success. The entire Hebrew book collection of Archbishop Marsh’s Library in Dublin has been carefully catalogued by Javier del Barco (Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales). Javier’s careful research will add around 350 footprints to the site, and has unearthed exciting new material - he even found a previously unknown copy <http://www.marshlibrary.ie/a-fantastic-find-from-1493/>of an incunabulum (Nahmanides on the Bible, Lisbon, 1489)! We are happy to announce a new “theme” for this year of Footprints’ energies: incunabula, the earliest Hebrew printed books. While we will continue to welcome data on imprints from the beginnings of printing up to the early nineteenth century, we have decided to make a special push on incunabula this year. Choosing to focus on incunabula benefits us the most right now for building Footprints in a more systematic way, and also enables researchers interested in who read, owned, bought and sold these books to acquire the most comprehensive view of this area of the history of the Hebrew book as possible. You could say, we want to begin again from the beginning. Our partnership with MEI will go a long way in achieving this goal for European and Israeli collections, and we are beginning to focus on ways to work on collections that are out of the scope of the MEI grant.By the end of 2018 we aim to capture information about every known (and lost) incunabulum printed in Hebrew. We will achieve part of this goal thanks to a new collaboration with the Material Evidence in Incunabula (MEI)/15CBOOKTRADE project, led by Advisory Board member Cristina Dondi at Oxford. Three fellows will work for 6 months each, beginning in January, in the United Kingdom, in Italy, and in Israel; each will focus on identifying copy-specific data found in Hebrew incunabula in these countries. The three fellows will meet in Oxford with the MEI team and Adam in mid-December for training in MEI and Footprints. The data will be entered directly into MEI and subsequently exported to Footprints, significantly increasing the number of entries in the database. We will also turn to canvass the major collections of Hebrew incunabula in North America. We’ll be focused on the rich Hebrew incunabula collections in the New York area, Philadelphia, Boston, New Haven, Washington DC, Cincinnati, and Ottawa, as well as smaller collections or single copies in Los Angeles, Hartford, Providence, Bloomington, Provo, Utah, and San Juan, Puerto Rico. Adam just returned from Chicago where he examined the three incunabula at the Newberry Library. We are especially eager to hear feedback from you on this, particularly if (1) you are aware of funding opportunities for these projects or (2) if you know of private collectors who might be interested in joining the effort (or are one yourself!). We are also looking for interns in the cities mentioned above and faculty supervisors who are looking for hands-on research opportunities for their students. If you, your institution, or your students wish to join the hunt, please contact us. Finally, we haven’t abandoned the medium of the printed word. Keep your eyes out for our forthcoming article “Old Texts and New Media: Jewish Books on the Move and a Case for Collaboration,” in Digital Humanities, Libraries, & Partnerships, edited by Kate Joranson and Robin Kear. Chandos Publishing (forthcoming, March 2018). We welcome your questions, input, and suggestions for strengthening the project’s intellectual and material advancement. We look forward to sharing future developments with you. With our thanks for your ongoing support, Michelle Chesner Marjorie Lehman Columbia University Libraries Jewish Theological Seminary of America Adam Shear Joshua Teplitsky University of Pittsburgh Stony Brook University
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