August 22, 2010

The Pioneering Kibbutz Movement – Pioneers in Online Archive Automation.

The kibbutz movement’s leading archives select the IDEA@Arc system by IDEA Information Systems to expose the kibbutz movement’s heritage and archives on the Internet

The first stage of the new archives network includes four of the kibbutz movement’s leading archives: Yad Yaari – HaShomer HaTzair Institute for Research and Documentation, Yad Tabenkin - Research and Documentation Center of the United Kibbutz Movement, Moreshet - Mordechai Anielevich Memorial Holocaust Study and Research Center, whose archives are already automated using IDEA@Arc, and The Kibbutz Institute for Holidays and Jewish Culture, whose archives will be cataloged and automated from scratch, in compliance with the ISAD(G) international archive standard, as part of the project with IDEA@Arc.

The pioneering initiative will be launched on the Web to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the kibbutz movement. The catalogs of the four archives will be exposed online and will enable researchers and the general public to search and retrieve information from participating archives. The Web interface supports a quick search of all participating archives using IDEA’s Panorama module, a designated search on one or more selected catalogs, and a designated search on the catalogs of a selected archive.

The initiative was instigated by the main archives of the kibbutz movement: Yad Yaari and Moreshet (at Givat Chaviva) and Yad Tabenkin (at Efal). This pioneering archive network was made possible thanks to the generous support of a private foundation that wished to mark the 100th anniversary of the kibbutz movement by making the kibbutz heritage accessible to the general public in Israel and abroad. This is the first phase of the project, and the intention is to add other archives from the kibbutz movement and the cooperative settlement movement (Hityashvut Ovedet), that will interface with the project’s IDEA@Arc based technological platform.

Mr. David Amitai, director of Yad Yaari, stressed “the importance of running this project as part of achieving our goal of “getting the archives out of the archive” and realization of our long term vision of “an archive without walls” that will enable anyone with Internet access to share the cultural assets and information sources that are in the archive collections, while bridging over physical and geographical obstacles. This process is part of the information age. We intend to be among the leaders of this age through this pioneering project and other collaborations with UNESCO and MICHAEL, and through exposure of Hebrew and Arabic press on the Web and additional projects that will be launched during the next few years.”

Dr. Aharon Azati, director of the Yad Tabenkin archives states: “We believe that it is extremely important to make our collections accessible to the general public, as part of the research, ideology and documentation center of the United Kibbutz Movement. This initiative enables everybody to access the cataloged records using IDEA Information System’s IDEA@Arc software. The large amount of information that will now be exposed in the kibbutz archive network is only the first stage of our plan to add all the Kibbutz and Moshav archives to the network. We hope we will be able to procure the resources required to fulfill our goal. We would like to thank the donors that enabled us to implement this first stage, and IDEA Information Systems that did the work.

Mr. Gil Lin, CEO of IDEA Information Systems stated: “As a kibbutz software company, we view our being chosen for this project as a great honor and the closing of a circle. There is a growing international trend of establishing information sharing portals among archives and other heritage institutions, such as EUROPEANA, ATHENA APEnet and MICHAEL. These include a wide variety of cultural and heritage collections, enable information sharing among diverse institutions and provide exposure and accessibility of this information to the general public.”

“A plan for establishing an archives network comprising all the archive catalogs in Israel has been discussed for years”, adds Lin, “and we are proud that the IDEA system has been chosen as the infrastructure for the initial implementation of the kibbutz and cooperative settlement movement (Hityashvut Ovedet) archives network.”

The initiative will comprise all the heritage and cultural collections of the kibbutz movement and the cooperative settlement movement under one roof, and will support exposure and retrieval from one common catalog together with decentralized data and infrastructure management.

The founding partners of the initiative are:

Yad Tabenkin - Research and Documentation Center of the United Kibbutz Movement, whose archives comprise the historical archives of the various kibbutz movements, archives of Jewish youth movements in Israel and in the Diaspora, archives of political movements that were affiliated with the United Kibbutz Movement, many personal archives, collections of kibbutz local newspapers, posters, photographs, audio and video cassettes, flags, oral documentation, and the Koach HaMagen HaIvri collection (Jewish military movements in Palestine 1936-1948).

Yad Yaari – HaShomer HaTzair Institute for Research and Documentation includes archives of the Shomer Hatzair in Israel and the Diaspora, HaKibbutz-HaArtsi, the Israeli Labor movement, the Meretz party, the Peace Now movement, Al Hamishmar newspaper, Tzavta nightclub, the Givat Chaviva centers, Sifriat Poalim publishing house, collections of the kibbutz movement’s artists and photographers, kibbutz histories, personal archives, oral testimonies, and visual and audio-visual collections.

Moreshet - Mordechai Anielevich Memorial Holocaust Study and Research Center -The Moreshet archive is comprised of documentary material and primary sources entrusted to Moreshet by those who survived the Holocaust and serve as the archive for Hashomer Hatzair materials from the Holocaust period. To this day, the Archive continues to grow, assembling material that documents the horrors of the Holocaust and the strength of the Jewish resistance.

The Kibbutz Institute for Holidays and Jewish Culture’s mission is the creation of a significant pluralistic dialogue about Jewish cultural activity, with focus on Jewish festivals and life-cycle events in Israel. The Institute collects, preserves and catalogs holiday activities on kibbutzim, and the life cycle of kibbutzniks in three frameworks: the education system, the kibbutz community and the family. The Institute strives to follow and document the experiences that have been developed in separate kibbutzim, find the common denominators in the customs and substance of each holiday, and pass them on to the kibbutz culture and holiday coordinators.

IDEA Information Systems is a leading international software provider for the preservation, management and exposure of cultural and heritage assets. Based on its integrated state-of-the-art ALM (Archives, Libraries, Museums) multilingual information management platform, IDEA provides an end-to-end solution, covering all aspects of heritage assets management: from document capture to enhanced classification, administration and publishing for archives, historical museums and research centers. IDEA is active in Israel, Europe and the United States.