https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/29709
Iton 77 is one of the prominent literary magazines of literature, poetry, and culture in Israel.[1] The UT Libraries has cooperated with the publishers of Iton 77 since 2013 and recently finished the digitization of 391 issues, bringing almost the whole run online.[2] Additional issues will be digitized or added as digitally-born files in the near future. This is the most complete digital archive of Iton 77 currently in existence. Being a searchable, full text archive, openly accessible to the public worldwide with no restrictions, it promises to be a valuable resource for scholars as well as for the general public.
Established by the late poet and editor Yaakov Besser in 1977, the magazine is now celebrating 48 years of commitment to literary work. Many Israeli poets and authors published their first texts in Iton 77, and it is still a desired platform for emerging and experienced writers alike. Published works include poems, short stories, book reviews, literary criticism and research, opinion editorials, essays, and works in translation. Wide representation is given to Israeli writers who write in languages other than Hebrew, such as Arabic, Russian, and Yiddish. Being a pluralistic platform, Iton 77 is open to alternative narratives and opinions, acknowledging the importance of historical contexts while discussing the complicities and difficulties of Israeli existence. Current editors are Yaakov Besser’s son, Michael Besser, and ‘Amit Yisre’eli-Gil’ad.
Upon the acquisition of some print back issues of the magazine in 2013, UT Libraries and the Iton 77 publishing house discussed a future online visibility for the publication, and the possibility for hosting the digital issues on the UT Libraries digital repository – now known as Texas ScholarWorks or TSW. Like many other digital repositories, TSW was established to provide open, online access to the products of the University’s research and scholarship, and to preserve these works for future generations. In addition, TSW is also used as a platform for digital content that is not necessarily created on campus, but is rather a product of cooperation with off campus content owners, such as the Iton 77 publishing house.
TSW provides stable and long-term access to submitted works, as well as associated descriptive and administrative metadata, by employing a strategy combining secure backup, storage media refreshment, and file format migration. Conveniently and helpfully, all works submitted to TSW are assigned persistent URLs, – permanent web addresses that will not change overtime.
All scanned issues of Iton 77 have been OCR-ed for full-text searchability and can be downloaded either as text or PDF files. Currently issues are sortable by date and title, with sorting by author and subject in the works. With the permission of UTL and the Iton 77 publishing house, most of the content is mirrored and indexed on the Ohio State University Modern Hebrew Literature Lexicon.
The total number of downloads of all issues to-date is 241,947. Issues are viewed and downloaded from every corner of the globe. Not surprisingly, most of the users are from Israel, with the United States and Germany in second and third place. Other Hebrew readers connect from many other countries, including Egypt, Japan, Togo, and Syria.
The most popular issue since going online in TSW with 6194 downloads to-date is the double issue from January 1987, called the ‘decade issue.’ It celebrated some of the most prominent Israeli authors, poets, and essayists of that time, such as Yitsḥaḳ Aṿerbukh Orpaz, Aharon Meged, Erez Biton, A.B. Yehoshua, Dalia Rabikovitch, Anton Shamas, Shimon Balas, and many others.
We are excited about this partnership to bring Iton 77 to a global audience in this stable open access format and encourage all to browse and use it!
[1] “Iton” is the transliterated form of the Hebrew word for “newspaper” (עתון).
[2] This count includes 67 double-issues. Three issues (200; 293; 341-342) were published as printed books and are not included in the project.