Located in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library of the University of Pennsylvania, The Robert & Molly Freedman Jewish Music Archive currently contains over 1800 recordings, primarily in Yiddish and Hebrew. LP phonograph albums, cassettes, and CD's comprise the archive's catalogued holdings.

26,000 entries in the trilingual database catalog - English, Yiddish, and Hebrew- all include the title of each track or band of the recording, its author or authors, composer(s) where known, performers and so called "key words" as well as references to publications (available at the archive) in which original text, transliteration, translation and melody line of the recorded song or poem are published.

Inquiries and suggested corrections to the database will be welcomed by Bob and Molly Freedman, who currently "curate" the collection, at:

yidsong@pobox.upenn.edu

In addition, inquiries dealing with the sound archive as well as the Department of Special Collections may be addressed to Dr. Michael Ryan, director, at:

ryan@pobox.upenn.edu

For additional information about the Freedmans, please access the website maintained by the Friends of the Penn Library

Finally, we express our appreciation to Raphael Finkel, professor at the University of Kentucky and accomplished Yiddishist, who pioneered the posting of the searchable database -which displays English, Yiddish and Hebrew characters. The search index in the current website, now hosted by the Library of the University of Pennsylvania, is based in part upon Professor Finkel's program.