PHILADELPHIA, PA (July 9, 2026) – The PACSCL Board of Directors accepted the membership application of Gratz College, welcoming the organization at its June meeting.
“Gratz College is one of the first PACSCL members that supports research communities solely through digital resources. Gratz College’s Grayzel Digital Platform, which unites text, images, video, and music not only from the Gratz collection, but from related collections on early American Jewry and the Holocaust from around the world, is a model of digital aggregation in an open source format,” said Beth Hessel, Chair of PACSCL and Executive Director of the Athenaeum of Philadelphia. “We are delighted to welcome Gratz College to PACSCL’s robust consortium of research libraries.”
At the 2026 PACSCL Annual General Meeting, Gratz College was one of three runner-ups for the Noel Prize for excellence in open access projects for its work on the Grayzel Digital Platform.
Alison Joseph, Director of Digital Scholarship and Associate Professor of Bible at Gratz College, stated that, as a storied Philadelphia institution (founded in 1895), Gratz College is thrilled to join this network of our local colleagues. “Among our growing collections are artifacts from the Philadelphia Jewish community. We look forward to building our network and partnering with other PACSCL members.”
More information about the Grayzel Digital Platform can be found here.
The thirty-nine member libraries of the Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries collect, care for, and share with a world-wide audience collections that, in their depth and variety, comprise an internationally important body of unique materials for students, scholars and lifelong learners at any level. For additional information on PACSCL, its members, and its programs, see https://pacscl.org/