The Jewish News Photographic Collection consists of over 10,000 photographs and other documentation donated by the Jewish News of Greater Phoenix to the Arizona Jewish Historic Society in May 2007. The Jewish News of Greater Phoenix is a privately owned weekly newspaper reporting on local, national and international stories of interest to the Jewish community of metropolitan Phoenix, Arizona. The newspaper has been published continuously since 1948. The collection spans the six decades of the newspaper's existence with most of the material dating from the 1960's and onwards.
Funding for this exhibit has been provided by a grant from the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Phoenix.
Archival Team and Methodology
Dr. Lawrence D. Bell, Executive Director, provided overall direction for the accessioning and preservation of the collection and the digitizing of selected materials for submission to the Arizona Memory Project.
Martin Richelsoph, CRM (retired), Volunteer Archivist, performed some initial planning of the accessioning and preservation project, trained interns and volunteers, and performed some of the actual processing of the collection.
Ali Greenwood, Michael Lowe, and Serene Rock are student interns who performed collection processing, data input, research, digitizing and other functions regarding the collection and its use by AJHS.
Lindsay Ruck, Al Rubinow, Esta Polunsky, and Sheryl Brooks are volunteers who performed various tasks making the accessioning and processing of this collection possible.
The AJHS received the photos in 23 cardboard boxes and file drawers filled mostly with manila folders. Some of the folders held one or a few photos, while others were comprised of hundreds of pictures. Most of the folders were titled. Some of these titles corresponded with the contents of the folder, while others gave unspecific mention to what was inside the folder, i.e. "Misc S." The AJHS archived the photographs using the original filing order and file labeling in order to preserve the original order of the collection as received by AJHS.
The preservation process consisted of transferring all the photographs, slides, and negatives into protective polypropylene sleeves and antimicrobial folders. The folders have been stored in corrugated polyethylene (plastic) boxes that will resist water and prevent further deterioration or damage to the photos. About 80% of the photographs are identified with names, organization or event, and are stamped with a date that corresponds to the date of the newspaper issue in which the photograph appeared. This information was input into a searchable computer database.
Arizona Memory Project Display The photos displayed as part of the Arizona Memory Project website represent a small sample of the much larger collection. In organizing this display we tried to represent a cross section of community life exhibiting as many different organizations and individuals as possible. Additionally, we aimed to present photographs from all of the decades within the collection. The photographs are organized by category: religious, cultural, social, political, business, youth, weddings/bar and bat mitzvah.
