Judaica Sound Archives
The primary mission of the Judaica Sound Archives at Florida Atlantic Universities Libraries is to collect, preserve, and digitize Judaica sound recordings; to provide educational programming to highlight the contents of this rich cultural legacy; and to promote the use of this unique scholarly resource for students, scholars and the general public. The JSA maintains a website with over 7700 recordings in eight categories for the use of students, scholars and the general public. The online collection is searchable by performers, albums, track names and categories. The recordings may be streamed online but are not downloadble.
The JSA began its work in 2002 and now has more than 8,700 LPs, 1,500 cassettes, 205 45 rpm records, 125 eighttracktapes and 547 CDs. They have collected about 10,000 recordings per year for the last five years.
The recordings are classified into the following categories:
- Cantorial
- Chasidic
- Children
- Comedy
- Holiday
- Israeli
- Sephardic
- Yiddish
Some of the rarer recordings in the JSA archive:
- 160 single-sided records from before 1910, four of Yiddish comedian Frank Seidenfrom 1901
- 435 recordings from "Vistas of Israel" produced by the Jewish State between 1959 and 1963
- Three 10-inch Edison records, each a quarter-inch thick, produced in 1910 or earlier
- Seven Sephardic 78s, from 1907 to 1913