ROME – I-Tal-Ya books and the challenges ahead

An international conference, press presentations, and events in museums and cultural institutions—these are just some of the initiatives being planned to share the achievements of I-Tal-Ya Books with a wider, non-specialist audience. This ambitious cataloging project, focused on Jewish books in Italy, is coordinated by the Union of Italian Jewish Communities (UCEI) in collaboration with the National Central Library of Rome, the National Library of Israel, the Rothschild Foundation Hanadiv Europe, and with the support of the Foundation for Jewish Cultural Heritage in Italy.
So far, more than 25,000 books from libraries across the country have been cataloged. The goal is to complete the project, launched in 2018, within a year by reaching a total of 35,000 entries.
The roadmap for the coming months was at the heart of a meeting held at the Tullia Zevi National Library of Italian Judaism in Rome. Participants included Gloria Arbib, UCEI representative for the project; Stefano Campagnolo, director of the National Central Library of Rome; Caron Sethill, European program manager for the National Library of Israel; Rebecca Singer, representative of the Rothschild Foundation Hanadiv Europe; Diletta Cesana, head of the Tullia Zevi Library; and Arturo Ferrari, project lead for I-Tal-Ya Books’ digitization efforts. All attendees agreed on the importance of maximizing the project’s visibility to ensure its outcomes reach both specialist and general audiences alike.