Catalogues of Jewish Manuscripts from the Judaic Department of the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine

Among the documents stored in the Judaic Department of the National Library of Ukraine, approximately 60 units of the fund 321, listing 5, are catalogues and lists of manuscripts.

The forms of these catalogues is most closely approximated by the listings of manuscripts of the 1^st and 2^nd collections of Avraham Firkovich; judging from the handwriting, these listings (9 units) were written by Avraham Harkavi. It is also apparent that Harkavi created the bibliographic materials registering various groups of documents also stored in the mentioned collections, such as the List of Philosophical Treatises from the Firkovich’s collection, the notes about the number of Jewish and Karaite manuscripts, etc. In addition, Harkavi apparently composed various lists of manuscripts and printed books. Furthermore, the fund includes the description of the collection of Hebrew manuscripts from the Harkavi’s archive, as well as two short documents made by Firkovych and describing the manuscripts that were found in Kaffa and in the Old Synagogue in Chufut-Kale in the first half of the 19^th century.

Certain other descriptions of various collections of manuscripts written by unknown authors are also contained in the Kaufman’s collection. It also includes the catalog of manuscripts and lists of manuscripts created by different compilers. The manuscripts listed in these directories and descriptions now are stored in different libraries and collections worldwide. Some of these sources are probably lost forever, which makes the mentioned descriptions and catalogs especially valuable, for they contain the information that cannot be obtained otherwise.