Library of Hebrew University Now Has 213,000 Volumes; 22,000 Received During 1929

“Notes and News,” the annual publication issued by the Hebrew University Library, Jerusalem, possessing the most extensive collections in the Near East, has just been received by the American Advisory Committee, of which Felix M. Warburg is chairman. The number of volumes now included in the collection, which has the only medical library of note in the entire region, is over 213,000, of which 22,000 volumes were received during 1929.

Physicians all over Palestine make use of the medical books and current medical periodicals of the University Library. So important is this function of the Library that when the collections were moved from Jerusalem to the new building on Mt. Scopus, opened in April, 1929, a Branch Library for Physicians was maintained in the Medical Department of the Nathan Straus Health Center in Jerusalem. A second branch, also for physicians, was later opened in Tel-Aviv, with the cooperation of the local physicians’ organization. This department was recently presented with a gift of 400 volumes, contributed through the Avukah organization of New England.

The largest and most important gift to the Library during the past year was a collection of 10,000 volumes presented by Emanuel Hertz of New York City, who also contributed steel shelves for the stack rooms of the new Library Building. Over 7,000 Spanish books were included in the volumes donated by Mr. Hertz, together with 200 volumes on numismatics, a collection of books on bookkeeping and stenography, and a large musical collection, in addition to nearly 3,000 volumes representing modern German, Italian and English literature.

Foreign Societies of Friends of the Hebrew University have been formed in Germany, Denmark, England, Russia, Poland, Austria and Jugo-Slavia, and have also sent large collections to the Library during the past year. The committee in Kishineff, Russia, has devoted itself to the task of collecting documents on the history of Russian Jewry and of the Zionist movement in Russia. Owing to the political situation, these documents, of importance to the future historian, must be gathered chiefly in the districts which have been cut off from Russia. During 1929 the committee prepared an exhibit of the first books and archives gathered from these sources for the University Library.

In addition to the Schwadron Collection of letters, autographs and photographs of Jewish celebrities, which is the largest in the world, the Library is forming a collection of Palestinian posters, which now numbers over 2,000. Among the posters are government and municipal proclamations, announcements of educational and charitable institutions and of political parties, notices of entertainments, etc., issued during the Hebrew language controversy in 1914.