The Challenges of Reconstructing Cultural Heritage: An International Digital Collaboration

The digitization of the Freimann Collection, unique works belonging to the Wissenschaft des Judentums (Academic Study of Judaism), was a collaborative, international initiative to virtually reconstruct a cultural Jewish heritage collection that suffered losses during World War II. These works comprised the first engagement with pre-modern Jewish religious texts using modern research methods of academia. Building off a pre-war published catalog, the project brought together remnants of the original library collection in Germany and collections that were gathered in one of the main exile locations of German-speaking Jews in the United States. The freely accessible texts ensure the enhancement of scholarship by providing long-term discovery to an unlimited audience. Digitization and virtual reconstruction are not only crucial from a digital preservation standpoint, but also allow researchers to envision the works in the context of their intellectual and historical significance. The project also generated models for international collaboration and large-scale digitization workflows.