Library at the Katz CAJS Offprints Collection

The Library at the Katz Center is home to a vast collection of more than 192 boxes of offprints of publications by scholars of Jewish Studies throughout the 20th century. The collection grew over many decades within the framework of the Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning, the world’s first accredited graduate school in Jewish Studies, established in Philadelphia in 1907. It is now part of the Penn Libraries’ Judaica collections. The Dropsie library was given hundreds of these offprints, mainly written in English and Hebrew. They have been physically arranged and described and are housed in alphabetical order by box number and language. Some offprints contain dedications by their authors to faculty at the Dropsie College or to other individuals.

Accessing the Collection

To access the collection, use the finding aid below to search alphabetically by last name to see if a particular author, organization, or institution is represented there. At the end of the finding aid, there is an additional section of Hebrew names whose transliterated last names do not appear in the English language section but will be found in the corresponding box by Latin alphabetization. For example:  פרנקל, יונה = Frankel, Yonah (see box 48).  Be sure to note the box number (or numbers) which you would like to see.

To consult the materials, you should place a request using the Special Collections Research Account form. Materials can be viewed either at the Library at the Katz Center or in the Kislak Center Reading Room. Please remember to specify which boxes you would like to consult and when you would like to come to consult them.

Finding Aid: Non-Hebrew Offprints (Alphabetically, by Author)

Finding Aid: Hebrew Offprints (Alphabetically, by Author)