UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State University Libraries’ Open Publishing unit recently launched the "Survival on the Margins: Polish Jewish Refugees in the Wartime Soviet Union Bibliography" to accompany a new book by Eliyana Adler, Penn State associate professor of history and Jewish studies. The book of the same title was published last month by Harvard University Press.
The “Survival on the Margins” book includes five chapters chronicling the experiences of 200,000 Polish Jews who escaped the Holocaust as refugees in the former U.S.S.R., along with 15 historical photographs and documents and a primary bibliography. Adler also compiled the resources for the secondary bibliography, then approached Open Publishing for help creating the website to house it.
“I was expecting a simple single page that would have allowed interested readers to download the sources of my research,” said Adler. “Instead, Ally (Laird, open publishing program coordinator) and Angel (Peterson, open publishing production specialist) provided me with a beautiful, multifaceted site that has a sophisticated, searchable bibliography with tabs and pages for a great deal of related material. It is so much more than I could have imagined.”
Students Georgia Maczura and Alison Smith also assisted with the website.
The searchable bibliography contains the primary sources included in the printed manuscript, as well as secondary sources not in the printed book, in a user-friendly format that is easily accessible to readers. The site also houses supplemental illustrations, links to related articles and reviews, and events connected to the book.
“I am thrilled to have this wonderful site available as a resource for readers interested in learning more,” continued Adler.
Libraries Open Publishing, the University Libraries’ Open Access imprint, is a unit within the Research Informatics and Publishing department. Libraries Open Publishing provides tools and support for Penn State-affiliated authors and groups to publish full-featured electronic scholarly journals, searchable annotated bibliographies, monographs and topical web portals using a variety of digital platforms. All publications are free to view online and download. Copyright is retained by the individual authors, where possible, or by the journals or sponsoring entity. Almost all are licensed for use under a Creative Commons license.
For more information about the program, visit openpublishing.psu.edu or contact Ally Laird at alaird@psu.edu.