📚 Strashun Library Archive

This digital archive preserves and makes accessible the lending records of the Strashun Library in Vilna (modern-day Vilnius, Lithuania), one of the most important Jewish libraries in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust.

The Collection

The dataset contains 5,310 borrowing transactions involving 1,587 individual readers and 2,897 unique books, offering unprecedented insights into the reading habits and intellectual life of the Jewish community in Vilna between 1902 and 1940.

Historical Context

Founded by Mattityahu Strashun (1817-1885), the library served as a vital center of Jewish learning and culture. The records captured here span crucial periods:

• The late Russian Empire period (1902-1904)
• The interwar Polish period (1934, 1940)

The 28-year gap (1905-1933) likely reflects disruptions from World War I, the Russian Revolution, and subsequent political reorganizations.

Key Findings

• Hebrew periodicals dominated the most-borrowed materials
• Extreme seasonality with 80% of borrowing in November-December
• 61% of readers borrowed only a single book
• Dramatic decline in usage from early 1900s to 1940 (93% decrease)

Technical Notes

This visualization addresses significant challenges including 99.7% data sparsity, temporal discontinuities, and 56% of transactions lacking complete metadata ("ghost records"). The project employs novel visualization approaches including ego-network analysis for handling sparse historical data.

Acknowledgments

Data digitization and initial processing by [Original researchers]. Metadata enrichment from the National Library of Israel and YIVO Institute. This web application developed as a digital humanities project to preserve and share the memory of this important cultural institution.