JCat
Building JCat Phase 1!
Search the JCat catalog’s descriptions of Jewish documentary heritage – record collections that lead to discoveries of Jewish ancestors and about their lives.
While we are conducting records discovery surveys in countries throughout the Diaspora for more than 350 historical record types, we are releasing JCat Phase 1 with an initial catalog of more than 10,000 Jewish Newspaper and Yizkor Book titles. We have many more titles awaiting entry into JCat.
Try searching for your town or region of interest! Check back often as the uploading of new data continues.
Thank you to the early contributors to the Jewish Newspapers and Yizkor Books Compilations in JCat Phase 1: Hebrew Union College – American Jewish Periodicals Collection, Jewish Public Library (Montreal), Library of Congress, National Library of Israel, Ohio State University JPress, University of Florida, Yad Vashem with many more in queue.
Tips for Using JCat Phase 1
Search
If a newspaper or book title is in English, Hebrew, or other language, only searching in Latin characters is available today. It is an exact match today. Fuzzy search is not yet implemented. You can try shorter character strings to facilitate a successful match.
Filter
Filters can help produce successful search results. You can search on one or more of 8 column filters: Rec Type, Digital, Title, City, Country, Language, Repository, and Source. The filters are located by expanding the icon that is 3 lines shaped like a triangle with its tip pointing down.
Town and Region Names
Town and region names are exactly as provided by the information source. In a future phase, we will have alternate town and region names, historical and by language, and or normalized town and region names to facilitate searching.
Download
Under “Bulk Actions” you can select to download your search results or the entire database in PDF, CSV, JSON, Excel or XML format. This can be use for for several reasons: The number of columns for each entry make it difficult to read on screen. Downloading allows one to hide columns that are not of interest. CSV and Excel allow one to sort, analyze, and manipulate the data in different ways.
Hyperlinks
The database does not store URL’s as active (hot) links, only as a text field. To follow a link that is provided in an entry, highlight and copy the link. Paste it in a new window and go to that link. Alternatively, you can select the link text and right click on it. Most browsers will offer an option to “Go to the link”.
LTR/RTL & Other Anomalies
Because of the mix of languages in the data in JCat and the way various applications deal with left-to-right and right-to-left languages, you may see some anomalies, such as years in reverse order. We will continue to achieve consistency in the handling of the character sets. If you find other anomalies, please let us know via the feedback button below.
We Want to Hear From You!
Let us know about your experience with JCat Phase 1 – the good and the bad. Tell us your suggestions for improving JCat.
Tell us about a Jewish Newspaper collection, Yizkor Book, or other historical record collection that should be included in JCat.