Conservation Assessment of Paper, Audio, and Moving Image Collections the Reconstructionist Rabbincal College Archives

FAIN: PG-50509-09

Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (Wyncote, PA 19095-1824)
Deborah Waxman (Project Director: May 2008 to October 2010)

Hiring a preservation consultant to assess the conservation treatment needs of selected materials documenting the Reconstructionist Judaism movement, the only denomination of Judaism founded in America.

RRC's archives, created in 1999, house 534 linear feet of papers, photographs, audio and moving image materials. Most notable is the collection of Dr. Mordecai M. Kaplan (1881-1983), a scholar, master teacher, author, diarist and lecturer who founded the Reconstructionist movement and greatly influenced liberal American Judaism. In the past decade, we have moved materials to the archives and re-housed them; organized them into record groups/record series; generated finding aids; and mounted an exhibit. A consultation by the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts has recommended "a collections conservation survey of the rare and historically valuable items in the RRC Archives." We now apply for a grant to hire consultants (Rolf Kat and George Blood) to assess selected paper, audio and moving image items. With these assessments, we plan to seek funding to conserve the collection and make it maximally accessible to researchers and the public.