This research guide is based on a print finding aid first published in 2012 in conjunction with the activities marking the centennial of the Hebraic Section here at the Library of Congress. But it has, in fact, been many years in the making. Not all of the books were cataloged over the course of the last century or even identified. Many of them came to the Library without title-pages and/or colophons, making it difficult to know when and where they were printed or even, in some cases, whether all the pages were extant or not. Adding to the difficulty of identification was the fact that the pages of these early printed books do not always feature running titles or printed pagination. A scholar might well make some educated guesses, but verifying these guesses meant writing to colleagues and libraries around the world in order to compare similar volumes—and this was a slow and laborious process in those days before fax machines and computers. Thus many books remained unidentified on the shelves, or only partly identified.

Up until recently, that is. The computer age has provided bibliographic tools of which our predecessors could scarcely have dreamed. Online sites with digitalized images and cumulative data-bases allow us to answer, with the click of a mouse, almost any lingering question over the imprint of a given book or verify issues of textual integrity when the books reach us in fragmented form. Most useful of all has been the online Bibliography of the Hebrew Book: 1470-1960 External. Together with the online resources providing page-by-page scans of individual Hebrew books, this database has allowed us to finish identifying the entire collection of sixteenth century books in the Hebraic Section.

The final step in this multi-layer process was accomplished during the summer of 2020 when a very talented young intern in the Hebraic Section, Mr. August Kahn, a recent graduate of Pitzer College in Claremont, California, turned the original finding aid into the research guide before you now. Thanks to him, and to the expert support proved by Ms. Elizabeth Fulford at the Library of Congress, this guide now boasts all the bells and whistles of the Digital Age: hyperlinks to online catalogue records and enhanced bibliographic tools in the footnotes.

Surely there has never been a time when the old scholastic simile concerning the “ancients” and the “moderns,” and the battle between them for intellectual primacy, has seemed so apt. As one spirited participant in “Le Querelle” (as it was known back in the sixteenth century) framed his thoughts:

“If the ancients were giants, then we are dwarfs. But when dwarfs stand on the shoulders of giants—they see farther.”

Today, when we are not only standing on the shoulders of giants but looking into computer screens—these words seem truer than ever. That this research guide has now been completed is a tribute both to the scholars who came before us and to those who provide this computer age with its marvels of online tools and resources.

Ann Brener, Ph.D.
Hebraic Section, Library of Congress
July 30, 2020