Very powerful statement, Dina. Thank you.
~Haim
On Wednesday, January 22, 2020, 9:19:11 PM EST, Dina Herbert via Hasafran
<[email protected]> wrote:
The Association of Jewish Libraries is dismayed by the decision of the YIVO
Institute for Jewish Research to fire its librarians.
The difficulty of funding is one that we feel deeply within the world of
libraries and archives, with few funders and many institutions applying for the
same funding. We would caution, however, that replacing expert librarians with
non-librarians also has results that could impact an institution in the long
run. There are the obvious concerns of divvying up the jobs of four employees
among employees that already have full-time responsibilities. More than that,
though, subject librarians are trained in the nuances of a particular area of
research. The YIVO librarians had an expertise in Yiddish bibliography that,
like YIVO’s Yiddish book collection, is unsurpassed, and the loss of their
curatorial expertise is a loss for all YIVO users and for the collection.
Librarians often have connections to colleagues in their area at other
institutions, and can connect researchers with relevant resources around the
world. This was made exceptionally clear through the joint partnership of the
YIVO librarians with the National Library of Lithuania to integrate discovery
for books in both collections. We certainly hope that the decision to terminate
their librarians was a temporary move on YIVO’s part, and we look forward to
hearing about how this august institution will maintain its reputation and
unique library collections in the coming weeks and months. YIVO's decision to
remove all Library staff is also a decision to remove themselves from the
larger active Judaica library community. As the many responses from across the
world have already shown in just a few days, we already see the loss to the
entire Judaica library and scholarly communities.
As the leading authority on Judaic Librarianship, AJL stands with the community
in encouraging YIVO to reinstate the librarians to continue their critical work.
Read the statement here and please share widely.
Dina
Dina HerbertPresident, Association of Jewish Libraries: The Leading Authority
on Judaic Librarianshiphttps://jewishlibraries.org/
--
Dina Herbert
[email protected]__
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