Explore the Revamped JDC Archives Site

The JDC Archives, one of the most important collections in the world for the study of modern Jewish history, holds the institutional records of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee since its founding in 1914, showcasing the organization’s key humanitarian work over the past 104 years.

Now, after a major revamp, the JDC Archives website is being unveiled with a crisper and cleaner look. In addition, the site’s functionality has been modernized, making it more user and mobile friendly.

The newest feature of the site, “Our Stories,” is a one-stop shop spotlighting thematically arranged material including galleries, exhibits, and topic guides. Users can elect to explore the six topics: Rescue, Relief and Social Welfare, Jewish Renewal, World War II-Era Refugees and Displaced Persons, Holidays and Celebrations, and Genealogy and Family History; search by geographic location: The Yishuv/Israel, Central and Eastern Europe, Russia and the former Soviet Union, Western Europe, Latin America, and Africa and Asia; or peruse by decade.

Additionally, the “About Us” section continues to include JDC Archives news, a set of video lectures by Prof. Yehuda Bauer on the history of JDC, and digitized versions of JDC’s historic annual reports, all of which provide insight into the important role JDC has played in Jewish history over the years.

“We are excited that our redesigned website will enable users to access a large amount of new curated material that is organized in an intuitive and user-friendly format,” said Linda Levi, assistant executive vice president and director of JDC’s Global Archives.

The “Our Collections” section, comprising JDC’s expansive archival holdings, links to four searchable collections including the photo and documents collections, the newly searchable artifact collection, and the Names Index. The searchable Names Index, which holds more than 500,000 names, is one of the site’s most frequently used resources. It is a major source of information for genealogists and family historians looking for vital details of their family roots. Search results include links to the JDC digitized source documents–index cards, lists, remittances, and the like–from which the names were drawn.

Sample audio and video clips are available in the oral histories and film collections on the JDC Archives site as well.

The online collections database encompasses over 3 million pages of original documents, available as PDFs, for research by scholars, students, and the general public. This impressive database also includes more than 73,000 digitized photographs that highlight JDC’s lifesaving work around the world throughout the 20th century.

With records of activity in over 90 countries from 1914 to the present day, the JDC Archives includes over 3 miles of documents, 100,000 photographs, a research library of more than 6,000 books, 1,100 audio recordings including oral histories, and a collection of 2,500 films and videos.

Check out the new Archives website at http://archives.jdc.org.