Library Receives Grant to Preserve Judaica Collection

The Harvard College Library this week received a $500,000 grant from the Lucius N. Littauer Foundation of New York to establish a fund to preserve materials in the Library's Judaica Collection.

The Foundation's grant will create a permanent endowment to preserve on microfilm materials that are too disintegrated for public use.

"There are things in the stacks that are simply crumbling." Charles Berlin, Friedman Bibliographer in Judaica, said yesterday. Berlin said microfilming the texts, some of which date back more than five centuries, constitutes "a form of dissemination of scholarly material for the public," adding that "preservation equals dissemination."

The Library's Judaica Collection, which began with several items bequeathed to the College by John Harvard, has has grown over the past fifty years--after the acquisition of three major collections and the stablishment of the Library's Hebrew Department in 1962.

Harvard's Judaica exhibit is the largest university collection of its kind in the country.