Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Brandeis breaks the thousandth book mark: special four-part entry

This special four-part entry marks a milestone reached by Brandeis University: the scanning of our one thousandth publication on the Internet Archive website. The first entry, The Law of God, was the millionth book added to the Brandeis Libraries' collection in 1996. We thought it fitting that this volume would mark our one thousandth contribution to the Internet Archive. The subsequent entries demonstrate the breadth of materials we've selected for digitization.


Isaac Leeser. Sefer Torat ha-Elohim/The Law of God. First edition. 1845.

Isaac Leeser was a nineteenth-century American Jewish leader and the leader of Philadelphia’s Sephardic synagogue Mikveh Israel. In addition to publishing many textbooks for children and translating the Sephardic prayer book, Leeser founded the first American rabbinical school and the newspaper The Occidental. In 1845 he published the first Jewish translation of the Bible in the United States. Leeser’s work was based primarily on German Jewish translations and on traditional Jewish Bible scholarship, while aiming to make its style as close to the King James translation as possible. The Leeser translation soon became widely accepted and remained the standard Jewish translation until the publication of the Jewish Publication Society translation in 1917. In 1996 the Brandeis University National Women’s Committee (now known as the Brandeis National Committee) donated a copy of Leeser’s 1845 translation of the Five Books of Moses, Torat ha-Elohim / The Law of God, to the Library.

Click here to view this work on the Internet Archive.



Clarence Cook. Art and Artists of our Time. 1888.

Art and Artists of our Time is a six-volume set written by the distinguished nineteenth century critic Clarence Cook. Cook (1828-1900), considered to be the first professional art critic in the United States, was editor of the Pre-Raphaelite journal The New Path and longtime art critic for the New York Tribune. The six volumes of Art and Artists of our Time are profusely illustrated with engravings that reproduce the works of the most admired artists of the period (the book was published in 1888) and present a revealing glimpse into contemporary artistic taste, with its emphasis on aesthetics and morality over formalism.

Click here to view this work on the Internet Archive.




Charlotte Brontë. Jane Eyre: An Autobiography. First edition. 1847.

The first edition of Jane Eyre, published on October 16th, 1847, sold out within a few months, which was unprecedented at the time. A first edition of this book is extremely rare, because most copies of this edition were read to pieces. A second edition was published in January, 1848, and the third edition in April of 1848. The three-volume format was a popular one for novels at the time of publication.

Click here to view this work on the Internet Archive.





The Brandeis University Bulletin. Brandeis University. 1948- .

The Brandeis University Bulletin (1948-present) is a rich resource that provides much more than university course offerings. Particularly in the early years of the school's founding, the Bulletin was used as a promotional publication that featured photographs of campus buildings (new and old), campus maps, and even master plans with fold-outs. In addition to documenting the physical campus, bulletins listed university fellows; endowment, scholarship, and loan funds; research grants; student prizes; and faculty and renowned individuals who participated in General Education S, a former course requirement for all seniors at Brandeis.

Click here to view these catalogs on the Internet Archive.