Carnegie Mellon University Libraries have completed the Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project, a digital archive documenting daily life in the Pittsburgh Jewish community from 1895 to the present. The full text archive providing an unparalleled look back into more than a century of life in Pittsburgh is fully searchable, free and open to the public at http://ptfs.library.cmu.edu/pjn.
Three weekly newspapers and a weekly newsletter are archived: the “Jewish Criterion” (1895-1962), “The American Jewish Outlook” (1934-1962), “The Jewish Chronicle” (1962-present), and the Y-JCC newsletter series published by the Young Men and Women’s Hebrew Association, the Y-IKC, and the Jewish Community Center (1926-1976).
The successful six-year project was proposed by CMU Trustee Anne Molloy, executive director of the Posner Fine Arts Foundation and librarian at Rodef Shalom Synagogue. Molloy proposed a collaboration to digitize the historic Pittsburgh Jewish publications housed in the Rodef Shalom Library & Archive, the Rauh Jewish Archives at the Senator John Heinz History Center and The Jewish Chronicle office files. The collections — in paper and on microfilm — were heavily used and deteriorating.
The Posner Memorial Collection of six hundred twenty-two titles includes landmark titles of the history of western science, beautifully produced books on decorative arts and fine sets of literature.