How to Search for Jewish Studies materials in Special Collections

Browsing

Browsing all marked Jewish Studies resources

Over 1,400 works within Special Collections have been identified as significant resources for the area of Jewish Studies. Records for these works have been tagged with a “Jewish Studies resource” identifier.

To browse the complete list of tagged materials, use the PantherCat basic search option and choose keyword as the “Search by” option (see image below).

 

Enter the phrase “Jewish Studies resource” in the “Search for” box. It is essential to include the quotation marks.

Once the list of over 1400 records is returned to you, you can begin browsing or you can use the sort option to sort by published date (earliest first or most recent first), author or title.

Note: There are other resources in Special Collections that contain material, e.g. single chapters on Jewish topics or broad histories, etc., that a researcher in Jewish Studies might find relevant, but which are not designated as “Jewish Studies resource”. This designation is used to identify a wide range of materials in which relevance to Jewish Studies is significantly dominant.

In particular, Special Collections holds a number of polyglot Bibles and old Hebrew –Latin grammars, as well as other resources relating to Biblical texts or themes not from a Jewish perspective, that have not been included.

Browsing materials marked as originating from Milwaukee’s Temple Emanu-el

Special Collections received several hundred materials donated by the library of Milwaukee’s Reform Temple Enamu-el B’ne Jeshurun. When works from the Temple’s collection have been identified, they were noted as such. (There may be additional materials from Emanu-el that are not yet so identified.)

To browse the list of works from the Temple’s collection, proceed as above, but use the phrase “Jewish Studies resource – Temple Emanu-el”.  Remember to include the quotation marks.

Browsing materials marked as originating from the Rabbiner Seminar zu Berlin

Special Collections owns just under 200 works that carry the ownership stamp of the Rabbiner Seminar zu Berlin. If you can tell us how these works came to Milwaukee we would love to hear about it!

You may browse these works by entering the phrase “Jewish Studies resource – Rabbiner Seminar”.

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Searching

If you are interested in more focused searching, the following options may prove helpful. Depending on your goal, you may want to limit your search to “Special Collections” on the pull down menu of the Quick Limit box.

Tip #1: Use the truncation option. For example, a search for Jew? will retrieve all records with the words Jew, Jews, or Jewish. (It will also retrieve records with the words jewel or jewelry. See below.) Similarly, Judai? will retrieve Judaism, Judaic and Judaica.  Without the “?”, PantherCat will only retrieve exact matches to the string of letters you provide.

Skilled use of truncation can be a powerful aid to searching.

Tip #2:  Use Boolean logic to limit or expand searches. For example, Jew? not jewel? Will cast a wide net, but eliminate a number of irrelevant records. Similarly, rabbi? not rabbit? is useful in retrieving records containing the words rabbi, rabbis, rabbinic, rabbiner, etc.

“Or” is useful to expand a search, for example, Zionis? or Palestine or Israel. Such a search will retrieve records that contain any of the designated terms.

“And” is useful for restricting searches. Milwaukee and Jew? will retrieve only records with both these terms.

Tip #3: Use “Jewish Studies resource” as a limiter, by using the phrase “Jewish Studies resource” as one keyword, and then use Boolean logic to further limit or expand the results.

For example, to search for Jewish sermons for a variety of occasions, a keyword search of “Jewish Studies resource” and sermon? will retrieve only sermons relevant to Jewish Studies.

Tip #4:  Consider limiting by date range. (Keep in mind, however, that facsimiles or reprints of materials may have a publication date far later than that of the original work.)

One option is to use the “set limits” option on either the basic or advanced search. The earlier date limit should be entered in the first blank and the later date limit in the second blank. The circle indicating “Range” should be selected to retrieve records within the chosen range. For example, to view items between 1820 and 1900, set the limits as in the figure below.

 

Alternatively, the 260c field code can be used to designate a particular year or decade. For example, tips 1, 2 and 3 and 4 can be combined to search for relevant books in the 1890’s, by entering “Jewish Studies resource” and "260c 189?".

Tip #5: Ask Special Collections staff for help! The Special Collections librarian and other members of the Special Collections staff are glad to offer searching strategies and to suggest additional options and resources they may be aware of, relating to your particular topic of interest. Special Collections can be reached at (414) 229-4345 or via email at libspecial@uwm.edu.

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Additional notes on locating relevant materials

You will recover far more documents by using “Antisemitism” as a keyword than by using “anti-Semitism.” This is because “Antisemitism” is the Library of Congress Subject heading; nevertheless, a keyword search is most comprehensive. (Works relevant to this topic are sometimes categorized not under “Antisemitism”, but under “controversial literature.”)

When dealing with Yiddish texts be aware that publication places (and other names) may have alternative spellings in catalog records.  Some works published in Milwaukee will be noted as published in Milvaki or Milvoki (or even Milvoki, Vis.) Shikage and Shikago are both ways to spell Chicago, and a good number of materials are published in Nyu York. This should be kept in mind not only when trying to locate Yiddish materials in UWM Special Collections, but also when searching library records throughout the University and at other institutions.

Because works may be cataloged very specifically, (e.g. “piyutim”, it is challenging to find all materials by using keywords, (and even more so by subject terms.) For this reason, despite the fact that it is time-consuming to browse the entire list of “Jewish Studies resources,” browsing remains a useful aid in identifying materials that may be of interest, as well as of providing an overview of materials currently held in Special Collections

As examples, some useful specific search terms to start with may be:

• Hebrew                                  
• Bible O.T.
• Manuscripts and Hebrew and Facsimiles
• Zionism
• Jew? and religio?
• Jew? and Wisconsin
• Baron, Joseph
• “World war” and (Jew? or atrocit?)

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