University of Washington Building Digital Library of Sephardic Language
From The Seattle Times:
Devin Naar wasn’t hired at the University of Washington to teach Sephardic studies. The young scholar, only in his late 20s at the time, actually came to the university in 2011 to teach modern Jewish history.
Then the local Sephardic community found out that Naar could speak and read Ladino — the language of the diaspora resulting from Spain’s expulsion of the Jews in 1492, a mixture of Spanish, Arabic, Turkish, Greek and other languages picked up in the lands where they settled.
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The Ladino collection is among the nation’s largest, second to the one housed at Yeshiva University in New York. Among the finds is a rare book of ethics published in Istanbul in the 1740s and a 1916 book of advice to immigrants to the U.S., which among weightier matters carries a useful explanation of how to eat ice-cream cones. (Ice cream, Sephardic Jews had seen before. Ice cream cones, not so much.)
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Naar and his small team are digitally scanning their Ladino materials to create what they believe will be the world’s first interactive, online Ladino library and museum. They have started to upload materials, along with English translations of key passages and historical context.
Much More About the Collection (Interesting!) in the Complete Seattle Times Article
Direct to Sephardic Studies Digital Library (via U. of Washington Libraries Digital Collections)
See Also: By the Numbers: Building the Sephardic Studies Digital Library (via U. of Washington Sephardic Studies Program
See Also: Direct to U. of Washington Sephardic Studies Program Homepage
Filed under: Digital Collections, Digital Preservation, Interactive Tools, Libraries, News

About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.