In 2009, the Jewish Women's Archive got permission to put the Encyclopedia of Jewish Women, online. Launched on Mar 1, 2009, in time for Women's History Month, the Encyclopedia was an attempt to make the 2000 articles accessible and to promote engagement, re-mixing, and re-use.

1. THE
ENCYCLOPEDIA
OF JEWISH
WOMEN
Re-imagining the Encyclopedia in the Age of the Internet
Ari Davidow
Consultant/Strategist
ari@ivritype.com

2. IN 1997
A revolutionary, 2-volume book

3. IN 2007
A revolutionary, CD-ROM

4. REFERENCE RICHES!
From Sarah Aaronsohn to Krystyna Zywulska, this electronic encyclopedia
contains 1,690 biographical entries, 300 topic essays, and 1,400
photographs and illustrations. Together they capture the histories and
achievements of Jewish women from biblical times to the present day and
shed light on their changing roles worldwide.
Accessible to lay readers and scholars alike, this exceptional work
contains such valuable features as:
•
Full-text search of all articles and captions, plus category, century, and
country searches
•
Extensive cross-references
•
Glossary with pop-up definition links throughout
With contributions from over 1,000 world-famous historians and scholars,
this is an unparalleled reference. Academic Sponsors: The Institute of
Jewish Studies and the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry
at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

5. BUT, THE WORLD MOVED
EVEN MORE QUICKLY

7. What can you do online that is as engrossing as reading
several encyclopedia volumes, spread out on the floor?

8. First, expose the metadata.
If we use tag clouds, people can see “how much”

9. Expose the metadata whenever you list an article.
Now you have a Table of Contents that puts each entry in perspective

10. WHAT DOES AN ARTICLE LOOK LIKE?

11. We wanted to ensure that each element could be shared, remixed, used on its own

12. … and that readers could continue to add to the story.

13. … and they do.

14. ACCLAIM & CONSEQUENCES
(Project completed 2 weeks early.)
Launched on March 1, 2009, for Women’s History Month
Articles in all major Jewish media, blog posts, and more
Doubling of web traffic to jwa.org, where the Encyclopedia today
constitutes the major source of web traffic.
New data formats (ways to enable discovery, re-mix, sharing down to
the individual element) and use of CMS (Drupal) helped lead project
to bring JWA exhibits into one common internal structure (still being
completed)
New tools for gathering stories on jwa.org

15. NEXT STEPS

18. Tweeting the Encyclopedia of Jewish Women The Forward's Sisterhood
blog, May 9, 2011. "Although they were asked to commit to tweeting just
one article a week, many of the partners have immediately embraced the
project and have been tweeting multiple articles a day. Three days into the
effort, 58 articles had already been tweeted — and retweeted many times
over.”
"Abusch-Magder, who suggested the project idea to JWA, sees this as an
experiment in harnessing the power of social media to let people transmit
and translate historical information in their own way and to their own
networks. 'Scholars are not going to make history popular, but something
like this will,' the rabbi said."

19. To see the Encyclopedia in person:
http://jwa.org/encyclopedia