The Bernad and Barbara Winick Bernstein Archives of the Jewish Community of Knoxville and East Tennessee (The Archives)
Location Description
The Archives is located at the Arnstein Jewish Community Center. This collection includes more than 10,000 items capturing the history of the Jewish Community in Knoxville and surrounding communities including Oak Ridge and as far east as Bristol, Tennessee. We have a part-time archivist who is an experienced genealogist. The Archives is open to the public.
Our collection includes:
– Personal Records such as Invitations and announcements: births, weddings, Bar/Bat Mitzvahs, graduations documents; obituaries; diaries and scrapbooks; certificates, awards and honors; items reflecting community and sports involvement; books or pamphlets prepared for family reunions; and records of military service​.
– Family Histories including ​biographical sketches, family trees, narratives/oral histories of family history (recorded or videoed), and Immigration and naturalization documents.
– Photographs
– News stories
– Organization Records including books of minutes, correspondence, yearbooks, and bulletins.
– Business Records including ledgers, correspondence, deeds, and charters of corporations.
Practicum Work Mode
On site
Semesters or Time Period Available
Ongoing, not limited to a specific semester
Location
6800 Deane Hill Dr SW
Knoxville, TN 37919
https://www.jewishknoxville.org/archives
Contact
Nikki Russler
Archivist
NRussler@jewishknoxville.org
(865) 690-6343
Student Tasks
The Archives has a range of opportunities that can be tailored to student interests from collection management, event development and related research for public facing programs, to creation of digital collections. Specific projects will be tailored to provide a hands-on experience that would be meaningful to the student while also beneficial to the Archives. Knowledge of the history of Jewish Knoxville, Hebrew or Yiddish, or an understanding of Judaism is not necessary for consideration for a practicum at the Archives. In the past, we have had student projects that focused on the assessment of our collection, creating materials for a downtown walk of historically significant buildings to the Jewish community that were located on Gay Street, digitizing a collection of community newsletters and making these available online, and evaluating incoming materials to be added to our collection. We continue to have projects in these areas as well as other projects such as creating schema to organize digital collections, increasing our collection of oral interviews of community members, creating access to oral and video interviews the Archives has created (some dating to the 1980's), and creating new opportunities to engage the public in helping build and use our collection.
Type of Mentoring Provided to the Student
The Archivist and Archives Committee co-chairs will meet with the student and collaboratively create a project and task plan that will provide a meaningful work experience for the student. The project plan will be used as the framework for the work experience to ensure the project is meaningful and to provide accountability for the student and Archives personnel. The project plan will identify mentors for the student and further define roles and responsibilities so that the scope of work will be clearly understood and agreed upon before the practicum activities begin. The Archivist and co-chairs will direct the work of the student and provide one-on-one, hands-on guidance for tasks assigned in the practicum and will connect the student to additional community members who can expand the student's experience in areas of interest. Mentoring will include feedback loops for assessing performance and will identify ways in which to improve the work experience for the student as the project progresses.
Student Interaction With Others at the Location
The Archives has a very active committee of volunteers who may work on projects with the student. Our committee volunteers and Archivist have a range of capabilities to provide on-the-job training; several have a Master's in Library and Information Sciences from UT and so are familiar with the areas of study of the SIS program.
The Archives is located at the Knoxville Jewish Alliance's Arnstein Jewish Community Center. This facility offers multiple programs in addition to the Archives that are designed to engage the community (both Jewish and non-Jewish) which the student may find of interest including a pre-school, art gallery, social services program, indoor and outdoor sports facilities, and adult education programs.