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Gaster Archive Cataloguing Project

A successful application for funding has resulted in £45k to catalogue the Rabbi Dr Moses Gaster Papers.

A photograph of Rabbi Dr Joseph Gaster

24 March 2023

The Gaster archive is our highest priority Jewish collection and, particularly the correspondence, is consistently one of our most requested collections for consultation in the reading room. However, retrieval is currently approximately 50% successful. Despite this, for the last two years for which we have statistics (19/20 & 21/22 – none for 20/21 due to Covid) the collection was our second most popular for number of boxes consulted. Between August 2017 and July 2022, we received 44 detailed enquiries, and 23 visitors consulted 286 boxes – approximately 5% of all requests across our collections.

Cataloguing the Gaster archive is also central to our current strategic planning to improve access to collections from marginalised groups. We have a forward plan to align objectives across Special Collections to UCL’s ‘Liberating the Curriculum’ strategy. Work has included addressing outdated and offensive terms in our catalogues and prioritising the cataloguing of collections relating to race, disability and Jewish history.

The project will start on the 1st May 2023 and will take eight months.

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/library/digital-collections/collections/gaster

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/library/special-collections/moses-gaster