The Library at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies Library, located at 420 Walnut Street, holds approximately 200,000 volumes including a substantial rare book component and a significant corpus of manuscript materials ranging from Geniza fragments to 19th and 20th century personal papers and archival collections; it forms the core of Penn's research level collections in Judaic Studies. The collection is exceptionally rich in the history and literature of Judaism, including the Hebrew Bible, Rabbinica, Karaitica, Geonica, philology, and Jewish thought in general from late antiquity through the eighteenth century. It also has substantial holdings in the areas of modern Hebrew and Yiddish literature, as well as Judaica Americana.
Collections development at the CAJS library concentrates principally on the Hebrew Bible and the thought and literature of pre-modern Judaism, while the Penn Judaica Collection on campus contains major research collections in Biblical and ancient Near Eastern studies, as well as in modern Hebrew and Yiddish literatures. The campus collections provide strong support for the study of the history and cultures of Jews in the context of the Greco-Roman, early and medieval Christian and Islamic, and modern western civilizations. The Penn Museum Library supports the study of Biblical archaeology and the ancient Near East.