The penn/cambridge genizah fragment project: Issues in description, access, and reunification

Cataloging and Classification Quarterly

Volumn 42, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 21-39

  Lerner, Heidi G ^a   Jerchower, Seth ^b  

^a STANFORD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA   (United States)

Author keywords

Cairo genizah; Descriptive metadata; Digital repositories; Manuscript cataloging; MARC; Unicode

Indexed keywords

EID: 33746637195     PISSN: 01639374     EISSN: 15444554     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1300/J104v42n01_04     Document Type: Review

References (41)

1. Penn/Cambridge Genizah Fragment website see: http://sceti.library.upenn. edu/ geni/ah [accessed Jan. 12, 2005],
2. "Genizah." Encyclopedia Judaica, c1972.
3. See under "Cairo." Encyclopedia Judaica, c1972.
4. Benjamin Richler, Hebrew Manuscripts: a Treasured Legacy (Cleveland: Ofeq Institute, 1990), p. 116-118.
5. Stefan C. Reif, A Jewish Archive From Old Cairo (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2000), p. 4.
6. "Nagid." Encyclopedia Judaica, c1972.
7. Two Jewish sects co-existed in the Fustat community: the Karaites rejected the rabbinic tradition and laws followed by the Rabbanitc Jews. See "Karaism." Encyclopedia Judaica, c1972.
8. Richler, p. 116.
9. From the JTSA website see: http://www.jtsa.edu/library/about/specialcoll. shtml#manu (accessed Jan. 12, 2005].
10. Richler, p. 63-65.
11. Adolf Neubauer [ed.], Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library and in the College Libraries of Oxford (Oxford: Clarendon, 1886-1906).
12. Catalogue of Hebrew Manuscripts in the Collection of Elkan Nathan Adler (Cambridge, .England: The University Press, 1921).
13. Richard Gottheil, William H. Worrell [eds.], Fragments from the Cairo Genizah in the Freer Collection (New York: Macmillan, 1927).
14. Benzion Halper, Descriptive Catalogue of Genizah Fragments in Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning, 1924).
15. Agnes Smith Lewis, Margaret Gibson [eds.], Palestinian Syriac Texts From Palimpsest Fragments in the Taylor-Schechter Collection (London: C.J. Clay, 1900).
16. Neu Danzig, Catalog of Fragments of Halakhah and Midrash From the Cairo Genizah In the Elkan Nathan Adler Collection of the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1997).
17. Solomon Schechter, Facsimiles of the Fragments Hitherto Recovered of the Book of Ecclesiasticus (Oxford: University Press, 1901).
18. It was later discovered that the E. N. Adler collection contained a fragment, from a fifth codex (ENA 3597, as well as a fragment from a Hebrew paraphrase of Ben Sira (ENA 3053). These were published in: Joseph Marcus [ed.], The Newly Discovered Original Hebrew of Ben Sira (Ecclesiasticus XXXII, 16-XXXIV, 1), the Fifth Manuscript, and A Prosodic Version of Ben Sira (Ecclesiasticus XXII, 22-XXIII, 9) (Philadelphia: The Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning, 1931).
19. "Targum." Encyclopedia Judaica, c1972.
20. Index of References Dealing with Talmudic. Literature [CD-ROM] (New York: The Saul Lieberman Institute for Talmudic Research, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 2003).
21. For past overviews see: Jay Rovner, "The Computerized Genizah Cataloguing Project of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America; its History, Current. Status, and Future Prospects, With Some General Considerations of Bibliographic Control of Genizah Fragments," Shofar 8, 4 (1990): 37-58;
22. Robert Brody, "Cataloging the Cairo Genizah," Judaica Librarianship 10, 1-2 (1999-2000): 29-30;
23. Ezra Chwat, "Danzig's Catalog of Halakhah and Midrash Fragments in the E.N. Adler Collection and its Usage as a Research Tool," Jewish Quarterly Review 90, 3-4 (2000): 405-415.
24. David. Solomon Sassoon, (Ohel Dawid) Descriptive Catalogue of the Hebrew and Samaritan Manuscripts in the Sassoon Library, London (London: Oxford. University Press, 1932).
25. For the purposes of this paper, see the following definition: "The Dublin Core concentrates on describing intrinsic properties of the object. Intrinsic data refer to the properties of the work that could be discovered by having the work in hand, such as its intellectual content and physical form. This is distinguished from extrinsic data, which describe the context in which the work is used. For example, the "Subject" element is intrinsic data, while transaction information such as cost and access considerations arc extrinsic data. The focus on intrinsic data in no way demeans the importance of other varieties of data, but simply reflects the need, to keep the scope of deliberations narrowly focused." Dublin Core' is shorthand for the Dublin Metadata Core Element Set which is a core list of metadata elements agreed at the OCLC/NCSA Metadata Workshop in March 1995. The workshop report forms the documentation for the Dublin Core element set. (Stuart Weibel, Jean Miller, Ron Daniel, OCLC/NCSA Metadata Workshop Report. (OCLC, March 1995).
26. MARC 21 Format for Bibliographic Data, 1999 ed.
27. TEI website see: http://www.tei-c.org [accessed Jan. 12, 2005].
28. Digital Scriptorium website see: http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Script.orium [accessed Jan. 12, 2005].
29. MASTER website see: http://www.cta.dmu.ac.uk/projects/master [accessed Jan. 12, 2005].
30. Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules. 2nd ed., 2002 rev. (Ottawa: Canadian Library Association; Chicago: American Library Association, 2002).
31. Gregory A. Pass, Descriptive Cataloging of Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance and Early Modern Manuscripts (Chicago: Bibliographic Standards Committee, Rare Books and Manu script Section, Association of College and. Research Libraries, a Divi-sion of the American Library Association, 2002) [not yet in print when template was developed].
32. Plural otPiyyut (from Greekpoietés, poet; poiésis, poetry): postbiblical Hebrew liturgical poetry.
33. The development of the 16-bit Unicode character set has enabled the display of Hebrew and Arabic characters within the scope of this project. Vernacular transcriptions of Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic text appear within the records, most notably in the 500 fields. For the use of Unicode in MARC 21 see: MARC 21 Specifications for Record Structure, Character Sets, and Exchange Media. CHARACTER SETS: Pan 2. UCS/Unicode Environment: http://www.loc.gov/marc/ specifications/speccharucs.html [accessed Jan. 12, 2005],
34. Developed by Terry Reese: hu.p://oregonstate.edu/~reeset/marcedit/html [accessed Jan. 12, 2005].
35. The MarcEdit release at this time could only handle 8 bit. text; romanization symbols needed to be converted to MARC/ALA compliant characters. All Unicode Hebrew and Arabic characters were converted to 8-bit "junk." Thankfully, a more recent release of MarcEdit allows for the translation of 16-bit characters to UTF-8; this same release also includes utilities that convert MarcMaker files to XML according to Dublin Core and EAD criteria.
36. For MARC 21 specifications for Record Structure, Character Sets, and Exchange Media, see: http://www.loc.gov/marc/specifications/speccharmarc8.html [accessed Jan. 12, 2005],
37. Specifications for digitization and use of Dublin Core provided by Greg Bear (Manager, Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text & Image, University of Pennsylvania Library), E-mail message (July 16, 2004).
38. Cornell University Library MARC to Dublin Core Crosswalk sec: http:// metadata-wg.mannlib.cornell.edu/fomm/2002-09-20/CUL_MARC_to_DC_Crosswa].k. htm [accessed Jan. 12, 2005],
39. LizardTech company website see: http://www.li/ardtech.com [accessed Jan. 12, 2005].
40. Princeton Geniza Project, see: http://www.princeton.edu/~geniza [accessed Jan. 12, 2005],
41. S.D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: the Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza (Berkeley: University of California Berkeley Press, 1967-1978).