ebraicosanrocco@gmail.com
Why am I so interested in rescuing and cataloguing early Hebrew books?
Many times I was asked to answer this question. How did it all start? Why? Are you Jewish? Do you actually read Hebrew? And so on.
I guess it all started when 7-years-old me decided that she wanted to be an archaelogist and went on pilgrimage in the Holy Land. Since then, many things have happened, I have studied several languages, cultivated a strong interest in different cultures and religions, graduated in Hebrew and Arabic languages and cultures at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and, last but not least, obtained a Phd in Asian and African Studies in the same University.
While my interest in Hebrew and Jewish language and culture was growing, I was charmed by libraries and cataloguing systems, so I decided to attend the Vatican School of Library Science, where I graduated in 2013. Immediately afterwards I had the opportunity to work for two years at the “Renato Maestro” Library and Archive of the Jewish Community of Venice. There, I catalogued all the early Hebrew books collection, publishing its catalogue in 2016: הספרים של הגטו. I libri del Ghetto: catalogo dei libri ebraici della Comunità Ebraica di Venezia (secc. XVI-XX), (Padova: Il Prato, 2016).
As a result of this work, I started examining the footprints (provenance information) that I found in these books, and this analisys became my PhD dissertation. As i got involved in the study of book provenances, I had the opportunity to meet other scholars and librarians working on this field, with whom I started a fruitful cooperation. One of them is, of course, Dr. Michelle Chesner from the Columbia University Library, one of the creators of the Footprint Project: https://footprints.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/about/.
The more I fell in love with my work, the more I found Hebrew book collections in need of a cataloguer, that is a blessing. In 2018, I started the Sicilian project to which this website is dedicated, thanks to the support of the Catholic University Centre in Rome, and of the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture of New York.
Lately I have been working also for the Union of Italian Jewish Communities at the census of their single collections, that will be available soon on the digital library of the National Central Library of Rome, thanks to the NLI, the BNCR, and to the Rothschild Foundation.
By the way, in case you were still wondering … yes, I read Hebrew!