Archival Innovator Award: The Grayzel Digital Platform at Gratz College

The Grayzel Digital Platform at Gratz College is the 2026 recipient of the Archival Innovator Award from the Society of American Archivists (SAA). The Digital Scholarship Team consists of Dr. Alison L. Joseph, director of digital scholarship, and Dr. Anne Flannery and Elizabeth Japha, digital archivists. Established in 2012, the award recognizes an archivist, a group of archivists, a repository, or an organization that demonstrates the greatest overall current impact on the profession or their communities.

The Grayzel Digital Platform at Gratz College exemplifies archival innovation through its mission to digitally reunite dispersed texts, images, audio, and video from its own holdings and from partner collections worldwide. Named in honor of historian and longtime Gratz professor Solomon Grayzel, the platform reimagines how archival materials documenting early American Jewry, the Holocaust, and the post-Holocaust American Jewish experience can be discovered, interpreted, and taught. Built on a modular, open-source framework, Grayzel integrates advanced metadata architecture, scalable digital preservation standards, and an adaptable interface designed to serve scholars, educators, students, and the broader public. 

A cornerstone of this innovation is the Elie Wiesel Digital Archive, which preserves and makes accessible approximately 200 linear feet of materials from Elie Wiesel—Holocaust survivor, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, writer, and global human rights advocate. The collection includes extensive correspondence, manuscript drafts, photographs, audio recordings, and video documenting decades of intellectual, religious, and humanitarian leadership. Through comprehensive digitization and open access design, Grayzel transforms this monumental archive from a physically bound collection into a globally accessible primary resource.

The team creatively works to make Grayzel a living, collaborative platform that invites engagement from educators, students, researchers, and community members worldwide. By providing free public access to rare and historically significant materials, the platform has already made a significant and measurable impact on communities in the fields of Holocaust studies and Jewish history in the US. Grayzel stands as a model for how archives can use digital tools to extend their reach, foster collaboration, and contribute meaningfully to the broader information and cultural heritage professions.

Founded in 1895, Gratz College is the oldest independent college for Jewish studies in North America. Today, Gratz enrolls a diverse population of students from around the world with many programs that reflect its historic focus on Jewish studies and education. An early adopter of online education, Gratz offers blended and fully online degrees in a broad range of studies, including the world’s only Doctorate in Antisemitism Studies, the world’s only online Doctorate in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, a Doctorate in Education Leadership, and a Doctorate in Jewish Studies.

Established in 2012, past recipients of the Archival Innovator Award include Recollection: A Civil Rights Legal Archive, the Indigenous Archival Training Program, and the Opioid Industry Documents Archive.