Program

Preservation and Access: Preservation Assistance Grants

Period of Performance

1/1/2012 - 6/30/2013

Funding Totals

$6,000.00 (approved)
$6,000.00 (awarded)


Purchasing Preservation Materials to Preserve a Rare Book Collection

FAIN: PG-51480-12

Leo Baeck Institute, Inc. (New York, NY 10021-3502)
Renate Evers (Project Director: May 2011 to March 2013)

The purchase of rehousing supplies for three collections of rare books in the field of German Judaica from the 15th through the 20th centuries. Of national and international scholarly interest, these materials represent unique primary resources on a wide variety of topics, including the Renaissance controversy between Christian Hebraist Johannes Reuchlin and the anti-Jewish agitator Johannes Pfefferkorn; 17th- and 18th-century works on Jewish history and culture; and works that document the emergence of modern and secularized Jewish scholarship (the "Science of Judaism").

The grant would support the purchase of 78 protective boxes and 466 pamphlet enclosures for three newly acquired collections of rare books at the Library of the Leo Baeck Institute New York. A 2010 preservation survey strongly recommended acquiring these supplies to stabilize and protect the collections and to facilitate their handling. The preservation assessment was conducted by the Book Conservator Nelly Balloffet of Paper Star Associates, Inc., Ossining, NY, a company for book and paper conservation and library service. This preservation assessment was funded by a 2009/2010 NEH Preservation Assistance Grant for Smaller Institutions. The Leo Baeck Institute was established in New York in 1955 by German-Jewish refugees, who saw the mission of the Institute as the reconstruction of the once-flourishing tradition and culture of the German-speaking Jewry of Central Europe that were destined to be extinguished in the Holocaust.