How you can help

There are many ways you can help us as we work to digitize and update the lexicon:

  • Volunteer to help! Given current shortages in available financial support for projects in the humanities, this project is largely crowd sourced by volunteers. Currently, we need volunteers to work on:
     
    • Yiddish proofreading. (We really need a lot of this! It's fascinating to read the short biographies.) Advanced Yiddish readers please.
    • Coordinator(s) for adding contemporary Yiddish writers to the lexicon. This is a huge and vitally important task. Gather and input names and contact info with basics to send ankete (questionaire) and help to set up and/or update the pages.
    • Completing our questionaire for new writers to add (yourself or someone you interview). This can be done in English or Yiddish, but must know enough Yiddish to get titles, names, etc. correctly.
    • Layout to match Yiddish paragraphs with English paragraphs.
    • Update Yiddish spelling to YIVO standard orthography. (This applies to our updated "evergreen" versions only -- We are keeping a separate version of every article which respects the original spelling conventions.) For example, changing to פּ or פֿ instead of פ, and װוּ instead of װאו, etc. (Perfect for an Intermediate or higher Yiddish student who has been studying using standard YIVO style texts.)
    • Social Media Scout. Track new details (e.g, new Yiddish writers, new books, new translations, etc.) in Social Media and update the site (in both Yiddish and English, ideally) for the new information.
    • Meta data analysis , mostly in English, (e.g., coding for subjects, title case, etc.). Need to know at least intermediate level Yiddish in order to identify and check back to the original text with any questions.
    • Research & Update (in English & Yiddish) the writers' information. (Experienced researchers needed, fluent in both Yiddish and English.)
    • Research, cropping and inputting digital photographs with their source citations. (Minimally, need Intermediate Yiddish knowledge to match names, which are solely in Yiddish letters in certain sources.)

For all of the above jobs:
Contact us to get started! Specialized training and support will be provided. We request a minimum commitment of say an hour or so a week, please, for at least the first few months. Very satisfying work!

We are happy to work with you to design your work around your personal interests and research! Contact us at the above link so we can discuss together. Start anytime.