The Eliasaf Robinson Tel Aviv Collection and Exhibition
Source: Stanford University Libraries
A rich online exhibit and digital collection of the materials about Tel Aviv, "The First Hebrew City," which marks its centennial in 2009. Browse or search books, photographs, posters, postcards, and other material about Tel Aviv. The digitized collection now includes over one thousand photographs and postcards, three hundred printed volumes, two hundred large format materials (posters, maps and sewer diagrams) and six linear feet of archival materials. In addition to the annotated exhibit and digitized materials, the site includes an introductory essay, searching and browsing aids and related links.
At the end of 2005, the Stanford University Libraries acquired a rich collection of books, pamphlets, magazines, printed ephemera, posters, postcards, photographs, maps, architectural plans, and original documents about the early history of “The First Hebrew City.” It was assembled over a span of forty years by Eliasaf Robinson, a Tel Aviv native and Israel’s most prominent antiquarian bookseller. The Eliasaf Robinson Collection on Tel Aviv - as it is now known - comprises approximately five hundred printed volumes (books and periodicals) and twenty linear feet of archival materials. It is already among the most sought-after resources in the Stanford University Libraries. Approximately fifty percent of collection has been digitized using a wide variety of scanning devices. The curator's desire to capture the collection digitally with the best available fidelity and resolution guided the selection of the scanning device for each material type.
On April 23, 2009, Stanford's Tel Aviv Web site was officially launched, in conjunction with the opening of an exhibit, in Green Library's Peterson Gallery, of materials from the Eliasaf Robinson Collection. The Web site provides a distillation of the physical exhibit, and also serves as an online portal to the collection as a whole.