The Pearlman collection is at the heart of a big data project collaboration with the Center for Digital Humanities. The collection includes approximately 200,000 postcards displaying the Holy Land through the lens of the postcard: its landscapes, people, architecture and natural life. The collection is completely analogue, and is based on the work David Pearlman, a London based collector who documented, sorted, and studied the postcards for over 40 years. The significance of the collection required special arrangements ahead of its digitization, taking into consideration future research projects of different disciplines, as well as ensuring access to the broader public. The project includes scanning both sides of the postcards, providing links to the creators of the postcards through the information David Pearlman provided the center of Folklore on the publishers of the postcards, and including multiple layers of documentation on the objects – the printing technique, photography, and the themes the postcard addressed.

The project accompanied byYarin Benizri, as well as students of the Graduate Program in Folklore and Folk Culture Studies. In the future, we will also include digitization of the handwritten texts in order to follow the networks of postcards of the Holy Land, stretching over the entire works.