Archives of the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee

Overview

For nearly 100 years, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee has funded relief projects throughout the world—and in the process created a valuable archive of historic documents, archival photographs, and audio and video recordings from the early 20th century until present.

About the Website

JDC approached Terra Incognita, with whom we produced and designed this project, to create a new home for the Archives online. They were already working on a searchable database of their holdings, but wanted to highlight their historical accomplishments in an image-rich new website.

Among the goals for this project were to create photo gallery and exhibition templates that curators and archivists could easily use to publish new content. We also created an interactive timeline of JDC’s history and provided research hints for the Archive’s visiting genealogists, documentary filmmakers, educators, and other researchers.

We introduced a feature called “Recognize Someone?,” which allows individuals to point out people in the photos. This was especially important for the many photographs from the World War II era, where an aging population might hold the last identifying information about the people in those photos.

The Archive and its new website were featured in a New York Times article (March 2, 2012), when the content joined “other troves of historical data about Jews also available online.”

American Joint Jewish Distribution Committee