Jewish Studies Primary Source Collections

The Digital Scriptorium (DS) is a non-commercial online image database of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, or manuscripts made in the tradition of books before printing. DS unites scattered resources from a consortium of many libraries into a union catalog for teaching and scholarly research in medieval and Renaissance studies. It provides unprecedented access to illuminated and textual manuscripts through digital cataloging records, supported by high resolution images and retrievable by various topic searches. DS enables users from the most casual to the most specialized to study the rare and valuable materials of academic, research, and public libraries. It makes available collections that are often restricted from public access and includes not only recognized masterpieces but also understudied manuscripts that have been previously overlooked for exhibition or publication. DS fosters the public viewing of non-circulating materials otherwise available only within restricted access libraries. As a visual catalog, DS allows scholars and beginners to verify with their own eyes cataloguing information about places and dates of origin, scripts, artists, and quality. Special emphasis is placed on the touchstone materials, i.e., manuscripts signed and dated by their scribes, thus beginning the American contribution to the goal established in 1953 by the Comité international de paléographie latine (International Committee of Latin Paleography): to document photographically the proportionately small number of codices of certain origin that will serve stylistically to localize and date the vast quantities of unsigned manuscripts. DS publishes not only manuscripts of firm attribution but also ones that need the attention of further scholarship and traditionally would have been unlikely candidates for reproduction. Because it is web-based, it also allows for updates and corrections, and as a matter of form individual records in DS can and do acknowledge contributions from outside scholars. DS encourages interaction between the academic and the library world to build a growing and reciprocally beneficial body of knowledge. DS looks to the needs of a very diverse community of specialists: medievalists, classicists, musicologists, paleographers, diplomatists, literary scholars and art historians. At the same time DS recognizes a broader user community in the public that values rare and unique works of historical, literary and artistic significance.

From the first book published in English through the 17th-century, this collection contains over 125,000 titles listed in Pollard & Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue (1475-1640) and Wing's Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700) and their revised editions, as well as the Thomason Tracts (1640-1661) collection and the Early English Books Tract Supplement. The database offers complete citation information and page images.

HathiTrust makes the digitized collections of some of the nation’s great research libraries available for all. HathiTrust was initially conceived as a collaboration of the thirteen universities of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, the University of California system, and the University of Virginia to establish a repository for those universities to archive and share their digitized collections. HathiTrust will quickly expand to include additional partners and to provide those partners with an easy means to archive their digital content.

JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization established with the assistance of The Mellon Foundation, provides complete runs of hundreds of important journal titles in more than 30 arts, humanities, and social science disciplines. These scholarly journals can be browsed online and searched, and the page images can be printed for those available in full-text. The IUB Libraries subscribe to current content for only some titles available through JSTOR. Includes access to the following collections: Arts & Sciences, Business, Hebrew Journals, Ireland Collection, Lives of Literature, Public Health Collection, Security Studies Collection, Sustainability Collection.

All journals in JSTOR start with the first volume. Many include content up to a "moving wall" of 3-5 years ago, although some journals have a fixed ending date for their content in JSTOR. Please check individual journals for exact dates of coverage. 

For information about access to this resource for IU alumni, contact the Indiana University Alumni Association.

One Mail instructions:

If you setup a JSTOR account using your indiana.edu, you will need to update the address to your iu.edu before December 31, 2025. Please use the following instructions to update your account:

1. Log in to your JSTOR account
2. Click on your name in the top-right corner
3. Select “My Account” from the drop-down menu
4. From the Account page select “Profile”
5. Click the Edit button to the right of the personal information header
6. Update your contact email to use iu.edu & click the Save button

Note: While this updates the email address associated with your account, your username will not change. If you used your indiana.edu email address as your username, you may optionally contact JSTOR support at support@jstor.org to request that they update your username to match your iu.edu. This step is not required.

AI Research Tool

The Libraries' subscription includes optional access to JSTOR's interactive research tool. You must be logged in with a free JSTOR account to see and use the tool.

One Mail information:

On September 16, 2025 all optional MyMuse accounts with @indiana.edu email address were updated to @iu.edu email addresses. Please note that this change refers to the email address associated with your account. If your username was your @indiana.edu email address, the username has not changed. It is not possible to change MyMuse usernames. No further action is required.

WorldCat is OCLC's Online Union Catalog. It is the world's most comprehensive bibliography, with more than 33 million bibliographic records from libraries around the world. Use WorldCat to do a comprehensive search of published material, to verify citations, or to identify other libraries that own an item.