Specialised Information Service for Jewish Studies (FID Jewish Studies)

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Kai Eckert; Daniela Poth; Professor Robert Zepf
• Subject Area: Religious Studies and Jewish Studies
• Term: since 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 286004564

The Specialized Information Service (FID) for Jewish Studies–established in 2016 at the University Library Frankfurt am Main in cooperation with the Technische Hochschule Mannheim, (previously Hochschule der Medien Stuttgart)–serves scholars from the humanities and social sciences working on Judaism, Jewish culture and/or the State of Israel in the past and present. For the fourth project phase, the FID Romance Studies and the State and University Library Hamburg will partner with the FID Jewish Studies to improve the supply of research information and resources for researchers working on Judaeo-Spanish and Sephardic Judaism. The online portal of the FID Jewish Studies – www.jewishstudies.de – provides access to its service portfolio, which comprises of research support, a subject catalogue that offers a specialized search environment with extensive metadata enrichment, access to sources and research literature in print and digital formats, and data services tailored for Jewish Studies. JudaicaLink is a linked open data service that processes and publishes Jewish Studies data in a knowledge graph. The retroconversion tool Revrit improves the discoverability of Hebrew books by automatically enriching Romanized title data with original script. The FID Jewish Studies curates and maintains subject-relevant authority data as part of the Gemeinsame Normdatei (GND). The FID Jewish Studies collaborates with other FIDs to support interdisciplinary research areas such as Jewish history, philosophy or regions such as Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Furthermore, the FID Jewish Studies actively contributes to the further development of the overall FID system, most significantly with respect to subject indexing and authority data. It contributes to broader information infrastructures as well, such as NFDI–representing the interest of Jewish Studies and providing its expertise on multilingual and multiscript data. In the fourth project phase, the FID Jewish Studies aims 1) to further consolidate the FID as the central information infrastructure of Jewish Studies; 2) to optimize its data services needs of the digital Jewish studies; 3) to provide a sustainable supply of research literature and e-resources; which 4) will be expanded to include resources on Judeo-Spanish and Sephardic culture and literature in cooperation with the FID Romance Studies and 5) to further develop the FID as a key infrastructure partner and service provider for broader research and information infrastructures.

• DFG Programme: Acquisition and Provision (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)
• Co-Investigators: Dr. Kerstin von der Krone; Dr.-Ing. Thomas Risse