Stephen A. Schwarzman Building > Collections & Reading Rooms > Dorot Jewish Division

The Preservation of a Legacy

The Dorot Jewish Division's systematic conservation program seeks to preserve the fragile and important collections in its care and to permit the safe use of these materials. In 1937 the Dorot Jewish Division began microfilming the extant run of the Jewish Daily Forward, a prominent New York Yiddish newspaper, with technical assistance provided by the Works Progress Administration. A pioneer in the use of this new technology, the Jewish Division was among the first Judaica libraries and the first divisions of The New York Public Library to microfilm its collections. The Division has continued an active microfilm program, and today, most of the significant runs of newspapers in the collection are on microfilm. Ranging from The Day, a New York City Yiddish newspaper, to the Freie Arbeiter Stimme (Free Voice of Labor), an anarchist periodical published from 1890 to 1962, these fragile publications are now preserved for future generations of scholars. The Dorot Jewish Division also pursues cooperative preservation programs with other institutions to complete chronological series of periodicals. Copies of the Dorot Jewish Division microfilms are available to other libraries, making these resources more widely accessible.