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The University of Massachusetts Amherst
Libraries Ask Us

Judaic Studies

A guide to researching Judiaism and Jewish culture

Five College Libraries (e)Books

Discovery Search lets you to find print books and ebooks.

By default, results will include many formats including articles and films. To limit your results to books, find the 'Format' header on the results page and click 'Books' and/or 'eBooks'.

Once you find a book in Discovery Search, look for the location near the bottom of the record.

  • If the location is 'UMass Amherst Du Bois General Collection' you have two options:
    • Use the call number to find the book on the shelves. For information on how to use call numbers to locate print books, scroll down to the 'Call Numbers' section.
    • Click 'Place Request' to have the book sent to the Du Bois Library held shelf on the lower level for pick-up.
  • If the location is listed as a different Five College library:
    • Click 'Place Request' to have the book sent to the Du Bois Library for pick-up.

The links to access each ebook vary but will match or look similar to these:

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⚠️ Note that you cannot access ebooks that are only available at Amherst, Smith, and Mount Holyoke online libraries. This FAQ explains alternatives.

 

Yiddish Book Center

Located on the campus of Hampshire College, the Yiddish Book Center is a cultural institution dedicated to the preservation of books in the Yiddish language, as well as the culture and history those books represent.

Call Numbers

Call numbers are the numbers you see on the spine of the books in the library and in the online catalog records for our materials. Call numbers are like the street address of a book that will tell you where it "lives" on the shelves Each one iis a combination of letters and numbers looking something like this: BF76.7 .P83 2020

Once you have the call number for a book, you can use the W. E. B. Du Bois Call Number Directory to figure out which floor of the library it is located on.

Judaic Studies Call Numbers

Every book is given a call number from the Library of Congress Classification System to indicate what the book is about. This means that books on similar topics are grouped close together on the library shelves.

When a book has a call number that starts with BM, it means that it is primarily about some aspect of Judaism. There are others that do not start with BM which are also related to Judaic studies.

One useful strategy is to find a book on your topic and look at the books near that one on the shelves.

BM 1-449 ......................General Judaism
BM 480-488.8................Pre-Talmudic Jewish literature
BM 495-532...................Sources of Jewish religion, rabbinical literature
BM 545-582...................Principles of Judaism
BM 600-645...................Dogmatic Judaism
BM 650-747...................Practical Judaism
BM 750-755...................Biography

D 802-81.......................Holocaust studies
DD 253..........................Jews in Germany
DS 101-151...................Israel (Palestine).  The Jews

E 184.............................Jews in the US

GR 98............................Jewish folk literature

HQ 1172........................Jewish women

JQ 1758-1852...............Political institutions and public administration. Middle East

KBM 1-4855..................Jewish law. Halakah
KMK 1-4990..................Law. Israel

LC 701-775...................Jewish Education
LC 3551-3593...............Education of special classes of persons. Jews
LG 341-345...................Education. Individual institutions. Israel. Palestine

ML 3195........................Jewish Vocal Music

PJ 4501-5192................Hebrew & Yiddish language and literature
PJ 5201-5329.5 ............Aramaic language and literature

PN 842..........................Jewish literature in various languages
PN 3035........................The Jewish theater
PN 5650........................The Jewish press

Books Beyond the Five College Libraries

WorldCat

WorldCat allows you to search for books from libraries across North America, much of Europe, and other parts of the world. You will find many more books than we have here in the Five College Libraries. It is especially useful if you are looking for books in languages other than English.

Interlibrary Loan

Interlibrary Loan is a free service which lets you request books that we do not have here at UMass Amherst or the other Five Colleges. We work with other libraries around the world to have print books mailed to the Du Bois library and ebooks/book chapters shared electronically with you.

There are no limits on how many books/book chapters you can request.