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Topic: The focus of this special program is the Central Illinois Jewish Communities Archives (CIJCA), which was established in 2021 by an initial donation of historical materials documenting the Jewish community in Danville, Illinois, given by Sybil Mervis, Neal Ehrlich, and John P. Wolgamot. Created to document the legacies of small Jewish communities in Central Illinois, the collection has expanded to include communities from Champaign-Urbana, Bloomington, Decatur, and Springfield as well. The CIJCA also includes an oral history collection to complement the archival materials and highlight community members.

The speaker: Amanda Riggenbach is a recent graduate of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Master of Science in Library and Information Science program. She currently works as an academic hourly for the Central Illinois Jewish Communities Archives (CIJCA), which is part of the Illinois History and Lincoln Collections in the University of Illinois Main Library. From 2024-2026, she was the graduate assistant for the CIJCA. In both these roles she has worked to make the CIJCA accessible to researchers and the public through the arrangement and description of archival materials, exhibit curation, development of an oral history project, and other related projects. Prior to attending graduate school, Riggenbach worked as an oral historian in various capacities from museum projects to a Fulbright grant.