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This chapter investigates Yiddish-language heavy metal music as a manifestation of postvernacularity. Yiddish, the traditional language of Ashkenazic Jews, is now endangered with a geographically dispersed speaker base and a low rate of transmission to younger generations outside of strictly Orthodox communities. However, as the heritage language of most Ashkenazic Jews, Yiddish continues to play an important symbolic role in contemporary Jewish life even among those who do not speak or understand it. This phenomenon has been termed ‘postvernacularity’ (Shandler, 2006).

Yiddish is associated with a rich tradition of folk songs, popular songs, and ballads. Recent decades have seen a growing interest among younger generations in Yiddish language and culture, including its musical tradition. In addition to musicians specialising in traditional Yiddish song, there are also currently two bands worldwide who have produced a metal album in Yiddish: Gevolt (Israel) and Dibbukim (Sweden). The repertoire of both bands is comprised largely of classic Yiddish songs interpreted in a metal style but retaining the traditional lyrics and melodies.

The fact that these metal bands often choose to reinterpret traditional staples rather than composing original Yiddish songs can be seen as a reflection of the predominantly postvernacular status of Yiddish. The language plays an iconic role for band members and audiences. Concurrently, the fusion of familiar Yiddish songs with metal style makes a language often associated with traditional Ashkenazic society relevant to the twenty-first century.

The validity of transliteration in documentation is questioned in light of the resulting loss of precise information. The process is examined from the linguist's, cataloguer's, and user's points of view. The pros and cons of phonetic transcription vs. scientific transliteration are discussed. Specific problems of several non‐Roman alphabets are touched upon. The author advocates development of non‐Latin print chains for computers used for documentation work. Where the cost of this is prohibitive, scientific transliteration is imperative for the purposes of international documentation. For library purposes, maintenance of separate catalogues for each script is recommended.

As the only country in the world in which Hebrew is the official language, Israel found it necessary to develop software enabling its research library catalogs from the outset to handle two alphabets—Hebrew (including Yiddish and Ladino) and Roman characters. Starting in 1981, ALEPH, Israel's research library network, utilized locally developed software that could provide both a Hebrew and Roman mode. However, since the nation's research libraries had large collections in Arabic and Cyrillic languages, an urgent need arose for a system that could also handle Arabic and Cyrillic materials. This led to the development of soft fonts, software instead of the hardware‐based Hebrew‐English solution that was incorporated in ALEPH's earlier versions. The soft fonts can display on any VT320 or upwardly compatible terminal in Roman‐alphabet, Hebrew, Arabic, and Cyrillic. Furthermore, in the Hebrew and Arabic modes, the language of communication with the computer (commands, HELP, and so on) are also in the vernacular. This article focuses on some of the problems and solutions involved in developing ALEPH's multi‐script, bi‐directional system.

This paper aims to provide an alternative method of building quality collections for Jewish Studies collection development professionals in small and medium‐sized academic libraries with highly restricted budgets.

Sources of Jewish Studies literary awards were identified and a detailed analysis of awarded books' subjects and the publishing sources was conducted.

The results show that awarded books cover a vast variety of subjects of interest to Jewish Studies collections. Since many of them are also published by academic presses, the use of identified Jewish Studies book award sources should be considered by bibliographers responsible for building Jewish Studies collections in non‐sectarian college libraries with very limited budgetary resources.

The “one stop” access to all award sources and awarded books provides an easy access to otherwise dispersed information.

The comprehensive list of awards, nominated and winning titles, as well as the subject analysis presented herein, is the first of its kind. This can be used by Jewish Studies bibliographers to build and improve their collections and can also serve as a model for building other interdisciplinary subject collections.