The Society’s core collections, housed in two prominent locations in the Twin Cities, are available for personal and scholarly research.
The Eloise and Elliot Kaplan Family Jewish History Center, located on the Barry Family Campus in Minneapolis, houses the JHSUM offices and collections of family and oral histories, photography, videos and genealogy. The archives in this location, known as the Lyle Berman Archives, include the Sharron and Oren Steinfeldt Family Photography Collection and the Ackerman Family South Dakota Collection.
The Nathan and Theresa Berman Upper Midwest Jewish Archives, located in the Andersen Library at the University of Minnesota, contain synagogue and Jewish institutional records as well as historical materials from rural Midwest communities. Visit the Upper Midwest Jewish Archives online.
Contact us for more information about our collections and resources.
Search JHSUM’s photo collection on the Minnesota Digital Library Coalition (MDLC)Minnesota Reflectionsdatabase. Click below to begin your search.
ARCHIVES ALIVE! is a new column on exciting developments in the JHSUM archives
Susan Hoffman, Archvist
JHSUM has recently joined the Minnesota Digital Library Coalition (MDLC). Coalition members are part of a state-wide project composed of libraries, archives, historical societies and museums throughout Minnesota creating a vast computer-accessible collection of photos, maps and documents. Currently, there are more than 8,000 unique photos and images in the MDLC’s Minnesota Reflections database covering all parts of the state and a wide variety of topics.
The inclusion of almost 500 photographs from JHSUM’s Oren and Sharron Steinfeldt Photography Collection in Minnesota Reflections provides historic visual information about the Jewish community in Minnesota. The MDCL enthusiastically accepted JHSUM’s application to participate in the project, noting that our materials added value by conveying the diverse activities of a group of people bound together by religious, cultural and ethnic identity.
The MDLC provides our organization with server space, a database environment and imaging support that is the technical foundation for current and future collaborative digitization activities. JHSUM selects the materials to be digitized and supplies descriptive information about the photos. After the photos and descriptions are entered into Minnesota Reflections, anyone with Internet access can search the collection and pull up JHSUM’s materials in toto, or by a subject category, such as arts and architecture, businesses, sports and recreation, religion and education.
The photos currently in the collection cover the earliest years of Jewish life in Minnesota up through 1949. JHSUM will be depositing more materials, including some documents, during another round of digitizing later this year. In addition to the digitized materials, MDLC distributes curriculum guides and offers training to teachers and students interested in using materials in school research projects.
JHSUM’s photo collection is our most heavily used collection. Contributing many of our most evocative photos to a statewide database ensures that many more people will see these photos than if they had remained undigitized. JHSUM materials will be available in October at http://reflections.mndigital.org/ Take a peek now, and see the terrific company we are keeping.
