Genazim
The Friedberg Genizah Project
Announcement 8
January 2011
Genazim is glad and proud to announce a number of far-reaching enhancements and
additions to its website (www.genizah.org), as detailed below.
A – Digitized images of Genizah fragments
1 – Cambridge University Library (CUL)
The CUL Genizah collection is the largest in the world: about 65% of all Genizah
fragments are in fact in CUL. As previously reported, an agreement between CUL and
FGP was reached a couple of years ago, launching an ambitious project for the complete
digitization of this collection (with expenses covered by FGP), under strict procedures
and parameters, to assure the best possible quality of images for display and conservation
as well as for computer processing and analysis.
It is a pleasure to report that – thanks to the excellent cooperation between Genazim and
the Genizah Research Unit (GRU) of CUL headed by Dr Ben Outhwaite, as well as with
the Cambridge Digitization Lab – the project is advancing exceptionally well. With a
steady flow of some 8,000 – 10,000 images per month, we recently received from CUL
and already integrated in the website about 40,000 new images, thus bringing the total
number of images from the Cambridge Genizah produced, processed and currently
displayed in the website to 156,000 images. That this was achieved in less than a yearand-a-half is a tribute to both parties for the well planned, organized, and directed
operation.
In the appended table we list 382 boxes/volumes from CUL Genizah which have been
completely or almost completely digitized ("almost completely" meaning that images
from less than 6 shelfmarks from that box are still missing) and 19 additional ones which
have been partially digitized.
1
Thus, with the few exceptions mentioned there, the totality of CUL boxes defined to
contain the following material is already available in our website:
Bible, Targum, Lectionaries and Haftarot, Midrash and Biblical commentaries, Massora,
Mishna and Tosefta, Talmud, Responsa, Liturgy, Documents, Printed material, as well as
Miscellaneous, Misc. boxes, Or. Series, Arabic boxes (till no. 31) and AS series (till no.
154).
Moreover, the Mosseri collection is also currently being digitized by CUL.
2 – British Library
A few months ago, an agreement was reached with the British Library (BL) in London to
lunch a joint project for the digitization of their Genizah collection. The digitization will
be accomplished by the Digitization Laboratories of BL (with expenses covered by FGP),
following the procedures and parameters required by Genazim. A first batch was recently
received, processed and duly integrated in the databases, and about 3,200 images from
this batch are being currently displayed in the website.
(One interesting finding concerning a BL fragment from Ben-Sira is worth mentioning.
This fragment was already identified by Margaliouth (JQR 12, 1899) and then described
and transcribed in the Appendix of Margaliouth Catalog (vol. 1, 273-277). Still, no
microfilm of this fragment is available at the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew
Manuscripts in Jerusalem, and it seems that since Margaliouth nobody really examined
the original. Even in the latest edition of Ben-Sira Fragments (Beentjes, Leiden, 1997),
the fragment is mentioned only as [British Museum], without a shelfmark. Well, the
fragment is now displayed as Or. 5518, to the great joy, we hope, of all interested
researchers).
These high-quality images from BL were very meticulously produced, a quite complex
task when taking into account the special way some of the fragments in this collection
were stored. We greatly appreciate the results, and would like to thank Ms. Ilana Tahan,
Hebraica Curator at BL, as well as the photographers, for their expertise and their
cooperation.
The digitization of the entire collection is expected to be finished in a few months.
2
3. Small Collections
As per our declared policy of trying to track down every single Genizah fragment
available anywhere, we initiated last summer the necessary contacts and negotiations
with some twenty public, universities and private libraries, each holding a small
collection of Genizah fragments (i.e. from one to less than a few tens). The responses we
got were almost always positive, even enthusiastic, and following are the results of this
initiative:
Small Digital collections recently received and already being displayed in the website:
Ann Arbor, Berlin, Copenhagen, Dublin (Trinity College), Duke, Harvard, Heidelberg
(University), Heidelberg (Papyri), Lehnardt (Private, Mainz), Mainz, Leeds, Montreal
(McGill), Paris (Bibliotheque Nationale), Princeton (Theological Seminar), Schocken
Institute (Private, Jerusalem)
Currently being digitized
Basel, Birmingham, Schoyen (Private, Oslo)
Digitized from Microfilms or Photostats (originals lost)
Berlin (Community) and Frankfurt (from Photostats at the Schocken Institute,
Jerusalem);
Mehlman (Private) and Solomon (Private) (from microfilms of the Institute for
Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts in Jerusalem).
4. What is still missing?
Besides completing the CUL, Mosseri and BL collections, only the following is still
missing from our databases:
-
From England: the collections of Oxford, Manchester and Westminster.
-
From Eastern Europe: the collections from St Petersburg (RNL; Institute of Oriental
Studies), Moscow, and Kiev.
-
Private collections: Sofer (London), and the very small collections of Living Torah
Museum (New York), Lehman (New York) and the Vatican.
3
Bottom line, therefore, and with the number of images in our website already
approaching a quarter of a million, we are very close to achieve what was announced in
2006, at the start of Genazim, and seemed then an almost impossible vision: to
encompass the entire Cairo Genizah Collection, inventory and digital images, in one
website readily available and freely open to all.
5. Nahum collection
We remind our readers that the entire Nahum collection of Yemenite manuscripts has
been digitized and the images (about 84,000) are available at the Jewish Manuscripts
Preservation Society portal, http://www.jewishmanuscripts.org/, which can also be
reached through the Genizah site homepage. We are now finishing the integration of two
(partial) catalogs of this collection into the website, and hope to add in the future more
data on this collection as it becomes available.
The JMPS portal, now hosting the Genizah collection and the Nahum one, will soon be
hosting some new and challenging projects in the area of Jewish manuscripts, which are
now under planning.
B – Adding information by users
Special software was recently developed to allow accredited users to directly add
information to the project's databases and website. Appropriate instructions can be found
in the homepage of such users. We urge all such users, and especially all authors of
Genizah-related papers, to introduce the information they have (and at least what has
been already published) on any Genizah fragment into the Friedberg site database, so as
to let their colleagues benefit from their knowledge. We believe that in the long run,
adding information by the general public (in a Wikipedia style), in our case by accredited
users), will be ultimately the only way to enrich the website and thus make it all the more
useful to all interested users.
C – Numeric profile of a fragment
4
Following a research program in Advanced Processing of Digital Images, conducted in
Genazim in the last couple of years, headed by Dr. Roni Shweka and with the
collaboration of researchers from Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University, a set
of programs was developed that can automatically determine a variety of numerical
aspects related to a fragment, or rather to its digital image. These measurements are based
either on a ruler's image that is part of the fragment's image, or on the cm/inch grid that
serves as its background.
A few icons appear now in the upper right-hand part of an image page. Activating the
appropriate icons, the system will actually draw a frame enclosing the fragment, an
additional one enclosing the text-block, and a thin line on top of every text-line
recognized by the software. Positioning the cursor on one of the frame's lines will display
its exact length, thus giving the outer and inner dimensions of the fragment. Positioning it
on one of the fragment's lines will give the number of lines in the fragment. It is to be
hoped that this module will finally relieve the scholars from the painful task of actually
measuring the original manuscript, a chore usually considered as a necessary step before
publication.
Later on we'll add the margins' measures and the serial number of each line in the text, as
well as the average of the lines' thickness, of the inter-line space, and of the character
density in that fragment.
The system can also recognize a bifolio (differentiating it from a folio), as well as a text
with several columns (or several text-blocks) and will soon be able to display the correct
numbers for each such text-component of the fragment.
Finally, in the case of a multi-fragment image, the system will number the various
fragements in th4 image serially in a fixed (never-to-change) fashion. Thus, instead of
mentioning in a paper "the fragment in the upper left-hand part of TS X.XXX ", the paper
will cite " X.XXX [3]", or, alternatively, "FGP image no. YYY [3]". Needless to say, the
system will (automatically) give the same component number to both sides – recto and
verso - of the component, not a small feat in itself!
D - Improvements to the website
1. Bibliographical references
5
The website currently contains a complete file of bibliographical references to all
Genizah fragments in CUL, till 2004, as prepared by the CUL GRU and processed and
integrated by Genazim. Lately, we received from GRU the appropriate data for 2004 –
2008, and these will be displayed soon, thus producing a remarkable and unique
comprehensive set of some 105,000 bibliographical references to the CUL Genizah
fragments, covering all publications, in all languages, since the Genizah discovery and
until 2008.
Two teams are now simultaneously working on compiling references for non-CUL
Genizah fragments.
A – The team for Hebrew Publications has finished reviewing all journals and periodicals
in Hebrew since the Genizah discovery and until 2008, and will soon finish reviewing all
books published in 1966 – 2004. reaching about 50,000 references.
B – The team for non-Hebrew non-CUL references is currently reviewing systematically
the pertinent journals, periodicals and books, in English, and will later continue with the
other languages (German, French, Hungarian, etc).
2. "Choose a Library"
For users convenience, the list of libraries with Genizah collections, as it appears in the
"Choose a Library" column, has been separated into two parts: Public Libraries, sorted by
the library's city, as is usually done in the Genizah context, and Private Collections,
sorted by the name of the collection's owner.
3. QuickView.
This function that allows the user to browse quickly through the images of a collection
performs now much faster than before.
4. Notes
It is now possible to add a note related to a specific shelfmark to any unit of information
of that shelfmark that is displayed, including to its image in the image-page or in the
QuickView one.
5. Full-text search
Besides the regular full-text search on all transcriptions (and translations) of Genizah
fragments available in the website, which has been operational for quite some time, many
enhancements and additions have been added to this function, as follows:
6
-
Querying the free-text fields of the cataloging record: "running title", "remarks",
"free description" and a few other textual parts of that record;
-
highlighting the query-word in the retrieved text;
-
browsing the corpus's dictionary, sorting the dictionary alphabetically or by
increasing or decreasing frequency;
-
recall of the last ten queries performed.
We'll soon add the possibility of running a full-text search on the text of all available
Genizah catalogs.
We hope this progress in the website development will be helpful to Genizah scholars
and other interested users, and we'll be grateful as always for any comments and
suggestions. Please send your message to webmaster@genizah.org .
Prof. Yaacov Choueka
Genazim, Head
7
Appendix
Status of Digitized Boxes/Volumes from CUL
December 2010
Completely or almost completely digitized Exceptions
Partially Digitized
TS A1 – A45 (A23, A27, A33 no longer exist)
TS B1 – B20
TS C1 – C7
C6
TS D1
TS E1 – E4
TS F1 – F17
F3
TS G1 – G2
TS H2 – H18 (H1, H9 no longer exists)
H16
TS J1 – J3
J2
TS K1 – K16 (K4, K13, K20 no longer exist)
K8, K14
TS Ar 1 – 31 (15 no longer exists)
1a, 19, 31
TS 6H4 - 6H8
6H5
Misc.1 – Misc.36
AS 1 – AS 154
32
29, 70, 73, 152, 154
AS 189 – AS 198
Or. 1080.1 – 1080.15
2, 8, 10, 11
Or. 1080.A, B, C, J, K
Or. 1081.1, 2, A, B, D, J, K
8