During the last year we embarked on a major project to complete the cataloguing of the library, covering all its collections. These collections were prepared for computerization and at present consist of 7300 items (books, articles, press cuttings, and academic theses). Below we present a detailed survey of all the library collections whose book titles have been computerized or catalogued by hand:
A. Collections that have been catalogued and computerized:
1. The collection of sacred books brought from Iraq and donated to the Center: all the titles in this collection were catalogued in the computer according to the following subjects: Bible, festival prayer books (mahazorim), prayer books (siddurim), tales (qissa), Passover haggadot, writings of the Babylonian rabbis, writings of Rabbi Yosef Hayim, and miscellaneous. At present this collection contains about 400 books.
2. The library of Rabbi Naji Mukamal was received, catalogued, and computerized. It includes many books on halakha, and also sacred books used by his father, Rabbi Yitshak Salih Mukamal, of blessed memory, in Baghdad. As this is the first library of a rabbi from Iraq to be donated to the Center, we decided not to break up the collection according to the various classes of sacred books, but to keep them together as a single division on shelves that will bear the name "Library of Rabbi Yitzhak Salih Mukamal, of blessed memory".
3. A collection of articles in Hebrew, English, Arabic, French and German, consisting of about 1350 papers; all titles have been computerized according to the different subjects. In parallel the collection of press cuttings was also inserted into the computer, containing at present 1200 items.
4. The collection from the Jewish Chronicle, the oldest Jewish newspaper. All 1400 articles from 1841 to 1975 dealing with the Babylonian Jews in Iraq and the diaspora have been computerized. This collection contains many important details of the Jewish communities in Iraq and the diaspora, as well as details on Jewish families of Babylonian origin who migrated to countries of the Far East (the Sassoon, Ezra-Bahar, Kadouri, Meir, Hardon, and Moses families, and others).
5. All the book titles on the Jews of Babylon have finally been catalogued according to the following subjects: Judaism, history, literature, anthologies, theoretical studies, folklore, language, art, albums, academic theses, encylopedias, dictionaries, memorial volumes, periodicals and pamphlets.
6. All the books titles dealing with the Jews of the east and Sepharadi Jewry other than the Babylonian Jewry have been catalogued and computerized according to the following subjects: Sepharadi and eastern Jewry in Jerusalem, the Jews of the east in Eretz Israel, Judaism, the Jews of Morocco, the Jews of Greece, the Jews of Syria, the Jews of Egypt, the Jews of Yemen, the Jews of Tunisia, the Jews of Libya, the Jews of Ethiopia, the Jews of Spain and the Jews of the east generally.
This in fact completes the computerization of all the titles in the Center's library (about 3000 books and journals).
B. Collections catalogued by hand
1. All the issues of Bama'arakha, the publication of the Sepharadi and the eastern communities published in Jerusalem between 1961 and 1989, were scanned, and all the articles on Babylonian Jews in Iraq, Eretz Israel and the diaspora and on Jews of Iraqi origin were registered.
2. Two archives were acquired, arranged and catalogued by hand: a. The archive of the Association of Former Iraqis in Israel: the David Fattal Archive. This contains thousands of letters dealing with the condition of the Jews who arrived from Iraq in the mass immigration and subsequently, and their absorption in Israel. b. The archive of Jewish education in the Middle Eastern countries: the Shaul Sehayik Archive. This contains hundreds of photocopied documents detailing the connection between the Jewish communities in the Diaspora and the wide activity accomplished in the communities themselves with the aim of providing education to all the children of the community.
3. A catalogue was made of the collection in the Central Zionist Archives concerned with the Babylonian Jewry and at present including about 590 photocopies of correspondence between the Zionist Organization of Mesopotamia, which was headed by Rabbi Aharon Sasson ("the Teacher") and Zionist organizations in Eretz Israel in the 1920s and early 1930s, as well as treatment of requests by Jews from Iraq to purchase land in Eretz Israel.
4. A scan was made of the microfilms of the newspaper Al-Misbah (The Lamp) which appeared in Baghdad from 1924 to 1926, founded by Advocate Salman Shina and edited by the writer Anwar Shaul, and they were catalogued by hand according to the headlines and content on each page.
5. All the manuscripts in the Center's collection were catalogued. At present this collection has about 30 manuscripts of prayer books, Passover haggadot, cycles of years, eulogies and sermons that were written by the Jews of Babylonia in the last two centuries (the earliest ms in the collection is a Passover haggadah from 1791, donated by Ovadia Gurji).
The Babylonian Jewry Library contains almost all the material on Babylonian Jewry published in the last century. It is open to the general public and members of the academic community.