Western Jewish Americana
The Western Jewish Americana library holdings of The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life constitute the largest collection of reference and research tools about the Jewish experience in the American West in the world, including:
- Over one thousand printed volumes about the Jewish experience in the American West.
- Oral History collection, which encompasses audio recordings and transcripts of circa 100 oral histories documenting the lives of Jewish individuals and families that settled in the San Francisco Bay Area from the U.S., Europe and Asia (some of these interviews were done in collaboration with the Regional Oral History Office of The Bancroft Library, and their transcripts are already available online).
- 19th and 20th century Jewish Newspapers and periodicals: over eighty individual titles, published throughout California, Colorado, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii) available through original copies and twenty-six 35mm microfilm reels.
- Research and documentation files, including newspaper clippings and obituaries for genealogical research.
These holdings have countless correspondences with those of The Bancroft Library, and in some instances are duplicative of them. Aside from a select numbers of volumes that were not already at Bancroft, the newspaper collection, which includes a rare runs of the Jewish Press in San Francisco (including The Weekly Gleaner, The Hebrew, Emanu-El, The Jewish Progress and The Jewish Times) since its inception in the 1850's, as well as the clipping and obituary files (created and maintained for almost forty years by the staff and volunteers of the Western Jewish History Center of the Judah L. Magnes Museum), are the true gems in this library collection.
Western Jewish Americana books, oral histories, periodicals and research files are currently being processed, and will become accessible at The Bancroft Library.
