Aryeh Shemesh, Deputy Chairman of the Center
The Center stands before the multi-sided challenge of computerization of advanced projects. A multi-year program has been readied for collecting personal data of Jews born in Iraq, Israel and the Diaspora. The collection of information is on a computer file with a very extensive data base of the generations of Babylonian Jewry. Assembly of the data collected in the advanced computer system will allow the construction of family trees and genealogies, and later, when it becomes possible, the addition of pictures of family members, should these become available to us.
So far, 7000 pictures have been collected at the Center, documenting the manners and way of life of the Jewish community in Babylon in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. At the moment final preparations are under way at the Center for utilizing special software and introducing complementary equipment to allow scanning of all the pictures after they are classified by subject and period.
In the future, when integrated operation of the computerized applications is complete, we hope to offer random access to the pool of subjects, articles or pictures, and also to display family dynasties down the generations. One of the attractions of the computer systems in operation at the Center is the opening of our Internet site about a year ago. Although we activated the site with limited subjects and content, great interest was shown from all over the world, a fact that encouraged us to enlarge the site and go more deeply into some subjects. A special budget was mobilized for this purpose.
The site was expanded in March 1997, and includes the following subjects:
a. Details of the Museum in general.
b. Information on the Research Institute, the Guide Department, study days, and conferences; What's New and What's Happening at the Center.
c. Lists of our publications, including books, video films and newsletters, with an order form.
d. A general questionnaire and a Visitors' Comments page. The latter is online for all to read, and our visitors can contact each other directly.
e. A Membership form.
f. Table of Contents of earlier issues of Nehardea in English, which includes tiltles and authors.
g. The full text of the latest English Nehardea. We plan to load additional full text issues.
h. A selected list of new books received at our library.
i. Links to interesting sites on the internet, including sites related to Babylonian Jewry, Sephardic Jewry, general Jewish and Iraqi sites.
j. Iraqi Jews in the Diaspora: What's happening, conferences, articles,...
k. Call for papers for the second international Congress on Babylonian Jewry Research.
I wish to mention with joy and pride that since the site was expanded it has had many hundreds of visitors each week. People are interested in the various programs of the Center, and some even take the time to fill out the questionnaire and send an encouraging letter, or ask for information on a certain subject of interest to them, or request us to add new contents to the site.
These hundreds of vistors to the Center's Internet site are divided as follows:
About one third are from Israel, and one third are from the US. One to two percent visitors are from Canada, Britain, Holland, Brazil, Australia, Spain, Germany and Japan. The interest is from Jews generally, from former Iraqi Jews, from Iraqi non-Jews, and from others.
In the future we plan to show a wide range of subjects from the life of the Baghdad community. For example, the Lane (the koocha) will be shown and operated with the highly advanced Virtual-multiMedia Internet technology. By means of this technology, the visitor to the Center site will be able to reach the reconstructed Lane at the Museum and wander through it, using movement and sound. This technique will make the visitor to feel as if she or he is actually in the koocha, and enjoying what is on display there.