A-Z Databases

Find the best library databases for your research.

93 Databases found

All Databases

A

  • Only available on-site
AJS Review publishes scholarly articles and book reviews covering the field of Jewish Studies.
  • Only available on-site
The ProQuest Historical Newspaper Database of The American Hebrew & Jewish Messenger is a searchable database of full page, full text articles from 1857 to 1922. "This historical newspaper provides genealogists, researchers and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the time." --ProQuest
  • Only available on-site
The ProQuest Historical Newspaper Database of The American Israelite is a searchable database of full page, full text articles from 1854 to 2000. "This historical newspaper provides genealogists, researchers and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the time." --ProQuest
  • Only available on-site
Alternate Name(s) History Vault: American Jewish Congress Records
The American Jewish Congress, founded in 1918 under the leadership of Louis Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter, and Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, is one of the most important organizations dedicated to advocating for the interests of the American Jewish community and defending the civil rights of all Americans. The American Jewish Congress Records span from 1915-2009 and document the American Jewish Congress’s impact on the United States legal system, civil rights and liberties, the fight against discrimination and antisemitism, and support for the State of Israel. The records of the American Jewish Congress are digitized by ProQuest from the holdings of the American Jewish Historical Society. This module represents the first seven series of the collection, covering the history of the American Jewish Congress, the proceedings of its governing committees, the files of the Executive Directors, and records of the organization’s national conventions.
  • Only available on-site
Alternate Name(s) Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, American Jewish Historical Quarterly
Bringing readers all the richness and complexity of Jewish life in America through carefully researched, thoroughly accessible articles, American Jewish History (AJH) is the most widely recognized journal in its field. Founded in 1892 as Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, AJH is the official publication of the American Jewish Historical Society (AJHS), the oldest national ethnic historical organization in the United States.
Prior titles:
Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society: 1893-1961
American Jewish Historical Quarterly: 1961-1978
  • Only available on-site
Articles, review articles, commentary and book reviews on all aspects of the settlement, history and life of Jews on the American continent and on the causes and nature of Jewish emigration from various parts of the world to this continent. AJH is the official publication of the American Jewish Historical Society (AJHS), the oldest national ethnic historical organization in the United States.
  • Only available on-site
Known as "The Annual Record of American Jewish Civilization," the American Jewish Yearbook has been a very important and prestigious annual publication and a major resource for academic researchers and practitioners at Jewish institutions and organizations for up-to-date information about the American and Canadian Jewish communities.
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Featured
Ancestry is a comprehensive online resource for family history which includes many collections, such as the U.S. Immigration Collection, the U.S. Census Collection, and the Jewish Family History Collection. It is geared toward genealogists and family history researchers.
  • Available from home for free
The Felix Posen Bibliographic Project on Antisemitism includes works published throughout the world about anti-Semitism – books, dissertations, master's theses, and articles from periodicals and collections (presently about 40,000 items).
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ArchiveGrid includes historical documents, personal papers, and family histories held in archives around the world. Researchers searching ArchiveGrid can learn about the many items in each of the collections, contact archives to arrange a visit to examine materials, and order copies.
  • Available from home for free
"The Arolsen Archives are an international center on Nazi persecution with the world’s most comprehensive archive on the victims and survivors of National Socialism. The collection has information on about 17.5 million people and belongs to UNESCO’s Memory of the World. It contains documents on the various victim groups targeted by the Nazi regime and is an important source of knowledge for society today."--Arolsen Archives
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Scholarly research concerning the Jewish contribution to the visual arts and architecture, from antiquity to the present.
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The Aufbau Indexing Project includes a database which contains about 47,600 names that appeared in Aufbau between 1941 and 2003. It also includes useful links to Aufbau Online (vital records) & the German National Library (Aufbau’s digitized issues).
  • Available from home for free
Comprehensive bibliography of Austrian historical research publications (ca 170,000 titles, published beginning in 1945.
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The database contains information concerning the fates of more than 62,000 Austrian Jews who were killed in the Holocaust.
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The Consolidated Jewish Surname Index (CJSI) is a gateway to information on more than 500,000 different surnames, mostly Jewish, that appear in 34 different databases.

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  • Available from home for free
A comprehensive bibliography of all books printed in the Hebrew Language between 1473 and 1960, with over 100,000 titles and 12,000 authors.
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A genealogy guide for finding vital records.
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The Brooklyn Daily Eagle newspaper is being digitized by the Brooklyn Public Library. The first part is available online and covers the period from October 26, 1841 to December 31, 1902, representing half of the Eagle's years of publication.

C

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The database includes headstone inscriptions from Jewish cemeteries throughout the UK. Also included are records from various sources such as census returns, wills, birth and marriage registers, and many more.
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Chronicling America makes information available about numerous historic newspapers as well as digitized pages from many of those newspapers. The site offers a Newspaper Directory that provides information on American newspapers from 1690 to the 1960s.
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Search selected archival collections from the American Jewish Historical Society (one of the Center’s partner organizations) for names, places, or keywords relevant to your family history project. For a list of the databases that you can select for your search, please scroll down.
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Presents articles dealing with current events, with an emphasis on politics, social science and culture, with special interest in Jewish affairs.
  • Available from home for free
Online archives of digitized and fully searchable German Jewish periodicals from 1806 to 1938. There are well over 100 journals, yearbooks, reports, etc. from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia.

D

  • Available from home for free
This database brings together in searchable illustrated form the remaining registration cards and photographs produced by the ERR covering more than 20,000 art objects taken from Jews in German-occupied France and in Belgium.
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This website is a directory of online death indexes listed by state and county. Included are death records, death certificate indexes, death notices & registers, obituaries, probate indexes, and cemetery & burial records.
  • Available from home for free
Institute for East and South East European Studies’ digitized collection of historical German language newspapers and popular calendars. This includes 47 periodicals from the Czech republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia, Serbia, Ukraine, Latvia, Russia, and Georgia.

E

  • Only available on-site
"East European Jewish Affairs - an interdisciplinary journal - serves as the leading global journal dealing with both Jews in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union as well as Ashkenazic Jews wherever in the world they may be." --Taylor & Francis
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"Encyclopaedia Judaica is provided by Gale Virtual Reference Library. It is the online version of the 2nd edition which includes 22 volumes." --Gale
This resource is in English.
  • Available from home for free
The Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World Online (EJIW) is the first cohesive and discreet reference work which covers the Jews of Muslim lands particularly in the late medieval, early modern and modern periods.
  • Only available on-site
Encyclopedia of Judaism is provided by Gale Virtual Reference Library. It is the online version of the 2nd edition which includes 4 volumes.
Alternate Name(s) Comprehensive English-Yiddish Dictionary
This is the searchable online version of the Comprehensive Yiddish-English Dictionary based on the lexical research of Mordkhe Schaechter, edited by
Gitl Schaechter-Viswanath and Paul E. Glasser, and published by Indiana University Press in 2016.

F

  • Available from home for free
Alternate Name(s) Family History Library
The Mormon Church has the largest collection of genealogical source material in the world. Its Family History Library has microfilmed vital records from around the world, and their catalog may be searched at this website.
  • Only available on-site
"Fold3.com formerly Footnote.com is a valuable resource to genealogists and family historians. It includes millions of digitized historical documents from various resources such as U.S. National Archives and the Library of Congress." --Fold 3
  • Available from home for free
Footprints traces the history and movement of individual copies of Jewish books printed between 1450 and 1800.
  • Available from home for free
Housed at Yale University, the Fortunoff Archive collection consists of over 4,400 testimonies of Holocaust survivors, witnesses and liberators. (Database can be searched remotely, but access to the videos is available only at approved access sites, including the Center for Jewish History.)

G

  • Available from home for free
This directory, listing the Jews who were deported from Germany and perished during the Holocaust, is the online version of the four volume set published by the Bundesarchiv Koblenz (The Federal Archives of Germany in Koblenz) in 2006.
  • Available from home for free
The Search Engine for Online Historical Directories, which was created by Logan Kleinwaks, contains various telephone and address directories from mainly Eastern European countries, and can be searched by four different search options: Regular, Sensitive, Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex, and OCR-Adjusted.
  • Available from home for free
Geni.com brings together thousands upon thousands of (largely user-generated) family trees to create a resource of great value to genealogists and historians. Within the larger framework of Geni, there are also a variety of resources targeted at those interested in Jewish Genealogy.
  • Available from home for free
The Gershwind-Bennett Isaac Leeser Digitization Project—launched by the Penn Libraries—makes freely available online the collected papers of Isaac Leeser.

H

  • Available from home for free
Scanned “Seforim” (Rabbinic books in Hebrew) and selected issues of Hebrew journals published in America throughout the 20th century.
  • Available from home for free
Alternate Name(s) National Library of Israel; JPress
A project of Tel-Aviv University and the National Library of Israel (The Digital Library). The site contains a collection of Jewish newspapers published in various countries, languages, and time periods.
  • Only available on-site
"The major forum for scholarship on the Holocaust and other genocides, Holocaust and Genocide Studies is an international journal featuring research articles, interpretive essays, and book reviews in the social sciences and humanities. It is the principal publication to address the issue of how insights into the Holocaust apply to other genocides." --Oxford Academic
  • Available from home for free
This digital database was created to collect and preserve digital documentation about Holocaust memorial monuments, including standardized mapping, photography, description, and historical research in all countries.
  • Available from home for free
These recordings are personal accounts of the Holocaust from Jewish survivors living in Britain. The interviews were selected from a much larger oral history project, the Living Memory of the Jewish Community, which recorded testimony between 1988-2000.

I

  • Available from home for free
ICON is an international partnership between many prominent institutions that share a commitment to increasing access to, and ensuring preservation of, newspaper collections.
  • Available from home for free
Alternate Name(s) The Iraqi Mukharabat Archive of Jewish Materials
Written record of 2500 years of Iraqi Jewish life, containing over 2,700 books and tens of thousands of documents discovered in the flooded basement of the Iraqi intelligence headquarters by a US Army team in 2003.
  • Available from home for free
Alternate Name(s) ItalianGen; Italian Gen
ItalianGen is a website supported by the Italian Genealogical Group. It contains a database of indexes for over 16 million vital records, including naturalization and other genealogical records. It also includes a database of surnames as well as locations in Italy that have been researched by their membership.

J

  • Available from home for free
"With records of activity in over 90 countries dating from 1914 to the present, the JDC Archives is an extraordinary and unique treasure in the archival world. ... On this site, you can view galleries, exhibits, and topically arranged content (Our Stories); learn about the documents and finding aids, photos, artifacts, films, oral histories, and indexed names available in Our Collections; and conduct research in our online database."--JDC Archives
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The ProQuest Historical Newspaper Database of the Jewish Advocate is a searchable database of full page, full text articles from 1905 to 1990. "This historical newspaper provides genealogists, researchers and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the time." --ProQuest
  • Only available on-site
Progressive Jewish magazine that carries on the insurgent tradition of the Jewish left through independent journalism, political commentary, and a "countercultural" approach to Jewish arts and literature.
  • Only available on-site
The ProQuest Historical Newspaper Database of The Jewish Exponent is a searchable database of full page, full text articles from 1887 to 1990. "This historical newspaper provides genealogists, researchers and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the time." --ProQuest
  • Available from home for free
The JGS of New York, one of the largest Jewish genealogical societies, provides a database of Brooklyn naturalizations, a New York cemetery database, part of the New York City World War I Draft Board, and links to web pages of New York archival repositories.
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Jewish History publishes contributions in the field of history, but also in the ancillary fields of art, literature, sociology, and anthropology, where these fields and history proper cross paths.
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Jewish History publishes contributions in the field of history, but also in the ancillary fields of art, literature, sociology, and anthropology, where these fields and history proper cross paths.
  • Only available on-site
The Jewish Quarterly Review (JQR) is the oldest English-language journal in the fields of Jewish studies.
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The Jewish Quarterly Review (JQR) is the oldest English-language journal in the fields of Jewish studies.
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Jewish Social Studies aims to advance the understanding of Jewish life and the Jewish past; key themes are issues of identity and peoplehood, the vistas opened by the integration of gender as a primary category in the study of history, and and the multiplicities inherent in the evolution of Jewish societies and cultures around the world and over time.
  • Only available on-site
Jewish Social Studies aims to advance the understanding of Jewish life and the Jewish past; key themes are issues of identity and peoplehood, the vistas opened by the integration of gender as a primary category in the study of history, and and the multiplicities inherent in the evolution of Jewish societies and cultures around the world and over time.
  • Only available on-site
Founded in 1993. The Jewish Studies Quarterly publishes studies on all aspects of Jewish history and culture.
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Featured
Alternate Name(s) EBSCO Jewish Studies Source
Jewish Studies Source is a rich full-text database offering a multidisciplinary view of Jewish civilization, from its historical origins to the present. It provides hundreds of publications devoted to Jewish studies, including scholarly journals, magazines, books, monographs, biographies and more.
  • Available from home for free
This website is the world’s largest collection of information on Jewish women.
  • Available from home for free
This non-profit site is the central location for Jewish genealogy on the Internet. It consists of a great number of Research tools and databases, like the JewishGen Family Finder; the Holocaust Database, the Family Tree of the Jewish People, Town Finder, and various databases.
  • Available from home for free
Alternate Name(s) A Jewish family database of the 19th and 20th centuries
This database presents the vital records and, in increasing numbers, the biographies of Jewish men and women of the 19th and 20th centuries who lived within the borders of the German Empire of 1914.
  • Only available on-site
Featured
JSTOR is an archive of important scholarly journals. In addition to a comprehensive list of general interest titles, we provide access to Jewish Studies and Hebrew Journals.
  • Available from home for free
A searchable database of Jewish businesses in Berlin between 1930-1945. The database provides information on the type of business, the name of the owner, the location, and the period of operation. Please note, this database is entirely in German.

L

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Alternate Name(s) Hebraic Manuscripts
Digital access to 230 manuscripts covering a thousand years, written in Hebrew and in cognate languages such as Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-Persian, and Yiddish, with materials ranging from rabbinic responsa and commentary to poetry, Jewish magic, and folk medicine.
  • Available from home for free
Lo Tishkach Foundation, has developed an online database of more than 10,000 Jewish cemeteries located throughout Europe. It also includes information about mass burial sites in Eastern Europe. Many entries include pictures of the cemetery as it exists today.

M

This resource is a "Central memorial for the persecuted in Europe 1933-1945. Over 400,000 entries from the Supplementary Cards of the 1939 German Census, expanded with data from verifiable archival sources."--Mapping the Lives
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Dedicated to serious, highly-literate, intellection journalism which provides the American Jewish community and other readers with a much needed independent forum that is not tied to any organization or point-of-view.

  • Only available on-site
First published in 1974, Musica Judaica is the only scholarly journal devoted solely to Jewish music. Its content is varied and wide ranging, covering many important areas of scholarly investigation that, because of space considerations, are often overlooked by general music journals.
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Featured
MyHeritage Library Edition is the industry's most multilingual family history research database. It includes billions of historical documents from 48 countries, millions of historical photos, public records, indexes and additional resources that span the past five centuries.

N

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The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration’s (NARA) online indexes to passenger arrivals during portions of the 19th century from Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Russia. Data about each immigrant includes name, age, and destination.
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National Socialism, Holocaust, Resistance and Exile 1933-1945 is a database and virtual archive that consists of primary source editions and previously unpublished materials all searchable in full text though K.G. Saur Publishers.
  • Only available on-site
New Featured
The largest online newspaper archive, used by millions for genealogy and family history, historical research, crime investigations, journalism, and entertainment. Search for obituaries, marriage announcements, birth announcements, social pages, national and local news articles, sports, advertisements, entertainment, fashion and lifestyle pages, comics, and more.

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  • Only available on-site
Featured
"ProQuest’s Historical Newspapers: American Jewish Newspapers compilation enables researchers to investigate Jewish immigration, genealogy, history and so much more. [...] The Historical Newspapers: American Jewish Newspapers is comprised of four historical U.S. Jewish newspapers: The American Hebrew & Jewish Messenger (1857-1922), The Jewish Advocate (1905-1990), The American Israelite (1854-1922), and Jewish Exponent (1887-1990)." --ProQuest
  • Only available on-site
"ProQuest Historical Newspapers™ is the definitive newspaper digital archive empowering researchers to digitally travel back through centuries to become eyewitnesses to history.

From leading issues and events, like the U.S. Civil War, immigration, westward expansion, industrial developments, race relations, and World War I and II; to international, local and regional politics, society, arts, culture, business, and sports, ProQuest Historical Newspapers™ reveals the day-to-day news coverage to researchers and historical explorers, providing invaluable insights and information to users from a wide range of subjects." --ProQuest

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  • Available from home for free
Alternate Name(s) RTR Foundation
Genealogical index to Jewish and civil records in Eastern Europe, as well as a surname database and Holocaust lists.

S

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Sefaria is a collaborative initiative to translate and provide commentary on the core texts of the Jewish religion (Tanakh, Talmud, Zohar, Mishna, Midrash, etc…). This is an ongoing endeavor that invites users to make use of the tools as well as to contribute to the project.
  • Available from home for free
Housed at the University of Washington, Sephardic Studies Digital Collection includes books, archival documents, and audio recordings that illuminate the history, culture, literature, politics, customs, music, and cuisine of Sephardic Jews all expressed in their own language, Ladino.
  • Available from home for free
SephardicGen is a comprehensive web site created by Jeff Malka. It includes many Sephardic genealogy resources, such as Sephardic names and a gazetteer of Sephardic communities. Also included are Sephardic family trees and Ladino resources.
  • Available from home for free
The Shapell Roster of Jewish Service in the American Civil War is an ongoing reappraisal of the military service of Jews who served in the Union and Confederate Armies and Navies from 1861 – 1865. The goal is to identify every Jewish soldier and sailor who served in the Union and Confederate Armies and Navies during the American Civil War. The main source for both military service and Judaism is Simon Wolf’s The American Jew as Patriot, Soldier and Citizen.
  • Only available on-site
Presents innovative new scholarly work to a general university public. Reviews a wide range of books in the field, & emphasizes pedagogical aspects of Jewish studies at the university & college levels.
  • Only available on-site
Presents innovative new scholarly work to a general university public. Reviews a wide range of books in the field, & emphasizes pedagogical aspects of Jewish studies at the university & college levels.
  • Only available on-site
Southern Jewish History is the annual peer-reviewed journal of the Southern Jewish Historical Society.
  • Only available on-site
Alternate Name(s) History Vault
Stephen S. Wise Papers, 1874–1949, from the holdings of Brandeis University and the American Jewish Historical Society.
  • Available from home for free
Synagogue Scribes offers a unique and fully searchable database of London Ashkenazi Synagogue records, with the emphasis on pre UK civil registration, which began on 1st July 1837.

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  • Available from home for free
"The database contains millions of names of individuals persecuted under the Nazi regime."--USHMM

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  • Only available on-site
The World Biographical Information System Online (WBIS Online) is a comprehensive biographical database, based on the digitization of K. G. Saur's Biographical Archives

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  • Available from home for free
"This database includes information regarding victims of the Shoah: those who were murdered and some whose fate has yet to be determined."--Yad Vashem
  • Available from home for free
Alternate Name(s) National Yiddish Book Center's Steven Spielberg Digital Library; Digital Yiddish Library
The digital library includes full text Yiddish titles that are available free on the National Yiddish Book Center’s Steven Spielberg Digital Library website.
  • Only available on-site
Featured
Alternate Name(s) Verterbukh
This is the searchable online version of the Comprehensive Yiddish-English Dictionary edited by Solon Beinfeld and Harry Bochner, published by Indiana University Press in 2013.
  • Available from home for free
The New York Public Library's Digital Yizkor Book Viewer provides digital images of complete Holocaust memorial books, exactly as issued. 85% of the 700 yizkor books at The New York Public Library are accessible online in their entirety.

New / Trial Databases

The following databases are newly acquired or being evaluated for a future subscription.
  • Only available on-site
New Featured
The largest online newspaper archive, used by millions for genealogy and family history, historical research, crime investigations, journalism, and entertainment. Search for obituaries, marriage announcements, birth announcements, social pages, national and local news articles, sports, advertisements, entertainment, fashion and lifestyle pages, comics, and more.
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