Search the collections at the Center for Jewish History
Center for Jewish History: General Information
Lillian Goldman Reading Room
Ackman and Ziff Family Genealogy Institute
Primary sources are first hand information or data from witnesses or participants in past events. These can be in all kinds of formats, such as letters, notes, government documents, photographs, pamphlets or newspapers.
Studying primary sources provides us with direct evidence and information to better understand objects, people, places and events in history. Information comes right from the people and organizations that lived through those histories, and provides unique voices of the past.
Primary sources at the Center are most often found in the form of archival collections. They collections can be made up of letters, legal documents, notes, three-dimensional objects, audio and video recordings, and a variety of ephemeral material such as pamphlets, souvenirs, and notes. The Center and our partners work hard every day to make sure that these collections are organized, described, and preserved so that you can use them to learn more about the past, find out more about your family, or provide first-hand source material for your academic paper or book.
The Center's online catalog, search.cjh.org, provides access to hundreds of records from all five of our partner organizations that reflect the personal papers, photographs, books, periodicals, audio-visual material, and microfilm that are available to use for research. You can search for something specific like an author or a title or simply enter in keywords that you can filter further by document type, date, language, or specific partner organization.
Finding Aids
Through search.cjh.org, you can find hundreds of archival collection finding aids. A finding aid is like a table of contents for an archival collection. It can be a simple list of items or a more complex document that also includes information about the collection, such as a focused history of the time in which the materials were created, a biographical note about the creator(s) of the collection, or a detailed description and arrangement of the collection.
Finding aids are an essential part of doing archival research as they help researchers pinpoint materials they would like to view to facilitate their research. With the assistance of Center archivists and metadata staff, hundreds of the partners' finding aids are available online, many of those containing links to digitized material that can be viewed from the comfort of your home or office.