The Books within Books Project and the Lodovico Media Library: Knowledge Skills and Tools in Order to Spread the Genizah of Modena

In this lecture I would like to present the latest research collaboration between Lodovico Media Library and the European project Books within Books Hebrew fragments in European Libraries. The aim of this partnership is the on-line cataloguing and digitalization of medieval Hebrew manuscript fragments.
Lodovico Media Library is being developed by the Center of Research on Digital Humanities- DHMore (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia) with the collaboration of Hyperborea srl through the software arianna4work and Mlol the digital lending platform for all Italian libraries.
The collaboration was born in 2021 in the midst of the “Mutina Hebraica” project under the scientific supervision of prof. Matteo Al Kalak (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia) and prof. Gadi Algazi (University of Tel Aviv). Books within Books signed this scientific agreement in order to make available its own cataloguing work on Hebrew fragments.
The first crucial aspect was to rethink the paleographical and codicological informations for a wider dissemination and to make the Genizah of Modena known to a non- specialist audience while maintaining high research standards in identifying each Hebrew fragment.
The second step involved the historical back-ground related to each Hebrew fragments and led to the following question: “what keywords does one choose and how in order to describe the passage of time and periodical campaigns of planned censorship and destruction each volume has gone through?
Working in a team with mixed-skill sets and diverse expertise allowed each researcher to find another perspective in creating dialogue between Jewish history and non-Jewish culture aimed at preserving this brittle heritage from a possible destruction and certain oblivion.