Colenda: Digitizing and Accessing the Kaplan Collection of Early American Judaica
in Penn’s secure digital image repository

Downloadable images and  accompanying bibliographic data for each item in the collection are freely available in Colenda, the Penn Libraries' new digital repository for long-term preservation:

 

About Colenda:

Colenda is built on a foundation of tools that prioritize the health and integrity of stored digital assets, using Ceph, a storage layer that prioritizes high availability and sustainability through replication and regular health checks, as well as functionality built into the platform to keep track of the entire history of an object whenever changes are made.

In addition to the rock-solid approach to preserving digital objects over time, Colenda provides additional features for free to objects that we ingest.  Each object gets a IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework) presentation manifest, meaning that the object can be presented in any tool that conforms to the IIIF specification.  We also use Amazon Glacier for off-site backups, as well as keep two logical copies stored on secure storage in our data center, so that each object in Colenda has three logical copies.

Colenda provides a safe haven for objects using an approach to digital preservation that values sustainability and and longevity.  It is a truly unique and valuable platform and approach to long term preservation, protection, and stewardship of Penn Libraries' digitized collections.

Note: To maintain the intellectual integrity of the Kaplan core collection of Early American Judaica, only the early Kaplan collection has been systematically scanned and ingested into Colenda, the Penn Libraries’ secure digital image repository.  Nonetheless, there are some Kaplan gift items that have been cataloged and scanned and are already in Colenda that do not belong to the Kaplan Early American Judaica Collection.  This is because when the original gift was processed, there were many items that were scanned, only to be deemed out of scope later.  Out of scope Kaplan gifts that have been scanned and are still in Colenda are now grouped as part of the Kaplan Modern American Judaica Collection.  Note, however, that all Kaplan Modern American Judaica is NOT scanned and discoverable online in Colenda.  The entirety of the original Kaplan 2012 gift, thus, will not be found when searching the Kaplan early American Judaica Collection in Colenda. Nor will the entirety of the Kaplan Collection of Modern American Judaica be found in Colenda.  ONLY THE CORE Kaplan Collection of Early American Judaica will be discovered in full in Colenda.