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Jewish Community News
News: May 2004
Jewish books for new city-university library
The new joint city-university Martin Luther King, Jr. Library has been selected as one of 60 public libraries nationwide to serve as a site for an I.B. Singer centennial celebration this summer, funded by The Library of America and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The Singer centennial – to be held on Sunday, July 25 – is one of several initiatives of the Jewish Studies Program at San Jose State University that seek to make the library and the university important resources for the local Jewish community. Another is an ambitious campaign to purchase books and other materials of Jewish interest for the new joint library.
“Good Jewish books have gotten too expensive and too numerous for most private, synagogue and community center collections,” said Prof. Michael Katz, coordinator of the Jewish Studies Program. “And usually a university’s library is not open to the general public. That’s where we’re different.”
Any San Jose public library user can check out volumes from the SJSU collection.
So far, Jewish Studies has raised over $1500 on campus, and will be bringing their fundraising campaign to the local Jewish community this spring. They are looking not only for donations, but for suggestions of titles to buy.
“One of the works we are planning to buy is a two-volume Holocaust literature encyclopedia that was published last year,” said Prof. David Mesher, a member of the Jewish Studies fundraising committee. “It was named as an ‘editor’s choice’ by Booklist and an ‘outstanding academic title’ by Choice. Those are the two big journals for librarians.”
And the more Jewish books bought for the library, the more Jewish Studies courses will be taught on campus. According to Katz, “Not only will donations purchase library materials, but at the same time they will also count as matching funds for a very generous grant from the Koret Foundation, so we’ll be able to buy the books and support more courses in Jewish Studies at San Jose State.”
The main floor of the new library is called the Koret Atrium.
For more information, please contact the Jewish Studies program at 924-5547.
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