FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 10, 2004
The Research and Special Libraries Division (R&S) of the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL) is pleased to announce the winners of its Judaica Bibliography and Reference Book Awards for 2003. These awards, underwritten respectively by Mr. Eric Chaim Kline of Los Angeles and Dr. Greta Silver of New York City, will be presented at the banquet at the 39th Annual Convention of the Association, which will take place on Tuesday evening, June 22nd, at the New York Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge. This year, the R&S Division of AJL is also pleased to announce a special one-time Body-of-Work Award. Underwritten by Mr. Harvey Krueger of New York City, the award will also be presented at the convention banquet. On behalf of the members of the Association of Jewish Libraries, we congratulate the winners on their valuable contribution to the field of Judaica reference and bibliography and thank the sponsors for their kind generosity and support. We hope that all will be able to join us in person at the awards ceremony. Winner's of this year's awards are: 1) Bibliography Book Award S. Lillian Kremer, editor. Holocaust Literature: An Encyclopedia of Writers and Their Work. New York: Routledge, 2003. This two-volume bio-bibliography for the research use of students, scholars, and the general public, provides access to the work of over 300 memorists, novelists, and poets, and some religious and secular thinkers and theorists. Essays by more than 120 specialists give new insights on well-known writers, second-and-third generation writers--the children of survivors--and introduce lesser-known writers in languages other than English. Each entry contains a complete list of the author's primary works and a bibliography of critical sources. Lillian Kremer's introduction gives an overview of national Holocaust literatures. Two bibliographies focus on concerns of theory and criticism and on various language groups. In addition to a glossary and maps, the encyclopedia's appendices include cross-listing authors and works by ghettoes, camps, historic figures, key events, literary themes, genres, languages, and the birth places of authors. Dr. Kremer is a member of the English faculty at Kansas State University. She is a recognized expert on Holocaust literature and 20th-century Jewish American writers. 2) Reference Book Award Guilherme Faiguenboim, Paulo Valadares, Anna Rosa Campagnano, editors. Dicionario sefaradi de sobrenomes: inclusive cristao novos, conversos, marranos, italianos, berberes e sua historia na Espanha, Portugal e Italia = Dictionary of Sephardic surnames: including Christianized Jews, Conversos, Marranos, Italians, Berbers, and their history in Spain, Portugal and Italy. Rio de Janeiro, RJ: Fraiha, 2003. This beautifully executed volume is a dictionary of 17,000 Sephardic surnames culled from 335 different sources from the 14th to the 20th century. Information for each surname includes locality where the surname is found, etymology, when the surname was first registered, names of Inquisition Courts that refer to the surname, and well-known Sephardic or Christianized Jews with the entry's surname. The authors were inspired by Alexander Beider's Dictionary of JewishSurnames from the Russian Empire (Avotaynu, 1993). Due to historical and geographical differences between Ashkenazim and Sephardim, the authors had to develop new methods of evaluation and analysis for their dictionary. Dr. Guilherme Faiguenboim, who lived in Israel for many years, is a member of the Colegio Brasileiro de Genealogia and a founder of the Sociedade Genealogica Judaica do Brasil and a co-editor of its bulletin, Geracoes. Anna Rosa Campagnano, also a co-editor, is an author and teacher, who has written about Italian Jews in Brazil. Paulo Valadares, member of Associacao Portuguesa de Genealogia (Lisbon), Colegio Brasileiro de Genealogia and Sociedade Genealogica Judaica do Brasil, a co-editor of Geracoes, writes about the Jewish presence in the Iberian Peninsula and the Diaspora. 3)One-time Body-of Work Award Avotaynu Publishers, Inc. (Bergenfield, NJ), founded by Dr. Sallyann Amdur Sack and Mr. Gary Mokotoff, is the recipient of this one-time Body-of-Work Award. It is the single organization which has helped "to grow Jewish genealogy" by providing excellent reference tools for the increasing number of people interested in their Jewish roots. In the past twenty years, the R&S Division of AJL has given more Reference and Bibliography Book Awards to Avotaynu Publishers than to any other publisher. Members of the R&S Judaica Bibliography and Reference Book Awards Committee: Aviva Astrinksy (YIVO), Veronica Belling (University of Cape Town), Yisrael Dubitsky (Jewish Theological Seminary of America), Nancy Pressman Levy (Princeton University), Peggy K. Pearlstein (Library of Congress), Abraham Rosenberg (Ets Haim Library, Amsterdam) Rita Saccal (Seminario Rabincio Latinoamericano "Marshall T. Meyer", Buenos Aires). Messages and opinions expressed on Hasafran are those of the individual author and are not necessarily endorsed by the AJL =========================================================== Submissions for Ha-Safran, send to: Hasafran @ lists.acs.ohio-state.edu SUBscribing, SIGNOFF commands send to: Listproc @ lists.acs.ohio-state.edu Questions, problems, complaints, compliments;-) send to: galron.1 @ osu.edu Ha-Safran Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html AJL HomePage http://www.JewishLibraries.org