The State Library of New South Wales with the assistance of the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce plans to digitise the Library’s large collection of Jewish cultural works including; books, journals, ephemera, photographs and oral histories.
The digitization will make this most important collection available online to the world for the first time and show the breadth and depth of the contribution that Jewish people have made to Australia. The collection covers the entire period since European settlement and will no doubt be of tremendous value to researchers. Within the collection are many artefacts of great significance including written and oral testimonies from survivors of the Shoah and a copy of the Schindler List.
Managing the digitisation process is librarian Andy Carr, who expects the project to complete over the next three years.
The project will officially launch next year, but you can see some of the work that has been completed so far here.
The National Library of Australia also has a Select Bibliography of Material in the National Library of Australia Relating to Jewish life in Australia at http://nla.gov.au/nla.arc-33808 that was compiled by Roxanne Missingham. It has not been updated since 2000 so is not fully comprehensive, but it is still a very good resource. The oral history recording listed will be available online and as digitisation continuously progresses at the NLA many of the other items will also be eventually available online.
The National Archives also has a collection on the Jewish contribution to Australia which can be accessed from here.
In Victoria there is The “Kadimah” National Library which “holds the largest collection of Yiddish books, periodicals, reference, audio and video materials in Australia.”
There is also the Jewish Museum of Australia’s Collection. They have a library also, but it is for use by appointment only.
