The Jewish virtual library (JVL), formerly the Jewish Student Online Research Center (JSOURCE), calls itself “the most comprehensive online Jewish encyclopedia in the world”. It is sponsored and maintained by the American‐Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, a nonprofit organization promoting cooperative US‐Israeli activities.
The JVL contains more than 8,000 articles and 3,000 photographs and maps. The content is organized under 13 “wings”: History, Women, the Holocaust, Travel, Israel & the States, Maps, Politics, Biography, Israel, Religion, Vital Statistics, Reference, and Judaic Treasures of the Library of Congress. This last is an online exhibit containing material from From the Ends of the Earth: Judaic Treasures of the Library of Congress. Each “wing” contains subcategories though which users can select from a list of articles. Articles average one to three pages in length. Many include bibliographies, most have named authors and sources, and there are extensive illustrations. Each article contains hyperlinks to others contained in the JVL.
The Reference section includes a bibliography of printed books (combined with a bookstore, linked to Amazon.com) and an unannotated “bibliography” of WWW sites. There is a glossary of Hebrew, Jewish, and historical terms and names. There are biographies of historical Jewish figures (religious and political) and contemporary Jews who were/are prominent in their fields (sports, entertainment, literature, politics, etc). There are also many other categories under Reference, including Essential Texts, Quotations, and Timeline for the History of Judaism.
A News section contains links to articles in today’s news sources as well as to selected retrospective articles intended to provide background information for major news stories. In this section users can see what files were added to the site, organized by month. There is also an interesting “Virtual Jewish Experience” section, “designed for anyone who plans a trip to Israel, hopes to visit in the future or just wants to learn more about the history of the Jewish state”.
A navigation bar appears on the left‐hand side of each page. The Library takes users to the “wings” of content described above. Additional selections (which are a bit of a hodgepodge and not always well labeled) are: About Us; Bookstore (i.e., Bibliography & Bookstore); Contact Info; Feedback; Glossary; Israel & the States; Links (takes users to Bibliography & Bookstore and Bibliography of Web Sites); News; Publications (of the AICE); Search; Sponsorship; and the Virtual Israel Experience. In addition to drilling down through categories to locate information, a simple search box is available. There is no Boolean or phrase searching. I was unable to determine the order of display of search results.
While most areas of the JVL are fairly comprehensive and current, some are not. The Reference section has a category of “Organizations” which contains a single entry. The list of Internships was last updated in October 2001. “How to Cite Internet Sources” dates from 1995. The stated goals of the JVL are to provide basic information – hence the intentionally brief articles – and to be a “one‐stop shop for information”. The deficiencies in the Reference section need to be remedied to accomplish the second goal. However, I think that the first is achieved very well through the Library content. This is an excellent source of basic information for K‐12 students and undergraduates.
