About the Library

The Kotar (Reference) Library is an innovative combination of an online library and a personal work environment, and is the result of cooperation with the leading publishers in Israel.

The Kotar Library was developed by CET, and its purpose is to make the best information sources (reference books, encyclopedias, journals, and so on), published over the past half century in Hebrew and English, available to school students, teachers, college students and seekers of knowledge.
It will also serve as the ultimate portal for finding accurate, in-depth information and an up-to-date, convenient working environment in the humanities and social sciences.

Content

The Kotar Library comprises works of various types:

Encyclopedias and topic lexicons, for example: the World of the Bible series; Encyclopedia of Plant and Animal Life of Israel; the History of Eretz Israel encyclopedia; From the Foundations – An Illustrated of Concepts in Judaism and Zionism; the History of Modern Jewish Religious Philosophy series; and New Jewish Time: Jewish Culture in a Secular Age – An Encyclopedic View.

Research and reference texts, among them: Eretz Israel from the Destruction of the Second Temple to the Muslim Conquest, edited by Menachem Stern and others; Human Rights in Israel, by Ruth Gavison; Changes in Israeli Society, by S.N. Eisenstadt; One People, One Language – The Revival of the Hebrew Language in an Interdisciplinary Perspective, by Shlomo Karmi ; The Mizrahi Struggle in Israel: Between Oppression and Liberation, Identification and Alternative, 1948-2003, by Sami Shalom Chetrit; The Environment in Israel – Resources, Crises, Campaigns and Policy from the Birth of Zionism until the 21st Century, by Alon Tal.

Philosophical texts, including For Human Sake – Ways of Humanistic Education, by Nimrod Aloni; Globalization – The Human Consequences, by Zygmunt Bauman; Cold Intimacies – Emotions and Late Capitalism, by Eva Illouz; The Disappearance of Childhood, by Neil Postman (in Hebrew translation); On Israeli and Jewish Place, by Zali Gurevitch.

Biographies, such as a series on the Jewish people’s leading thinkers and writers, which includes books on Rashi, Rabbi Yehuda Hanasi, Rav Saadia Gaon, Moses Mendelssohn, and others; Berl Katznelson: A Biography, by Anita Shapira; Ben-Gurion, by Michael Bar-Zohar; the Hebrew version of Founder of Hasidism: The Quest for the Historical Ba’al Shem Tov, by Moshe Rosman; Orde Wingate: His Life and Mission, by Abraham Akavia.

Classic works on the Land of Israel and Jewish culture, some translated to Hebrew, such as the Book of Maccabees, the poetry of Shlomo Ibn Gvirol, the Book of Judith, The Thanksgiving Scroll: A Scroll from the Wilderness of Judaea, by Jacob Licht, and the Wars of the Jews, by Josephus Flavius.

Being a Kotar Subscriber

The Kotar Library is a subscription library. Kotar subscribers can view the full content of all titles in the library, including new texts uploaded each month. Users who are not subscribers can view a few pages from the beginning of each book.

Kotar subscribers can carry out searches and view the search results, and also enjoy the benefits of a personal working environment and editing tools that allow them:

To add notes and comments on the pages that they choose.
To highlight, in color, selected passages in the chosen pages.
To save the markings and notes on the pages of the books that have been modified.
To copy texts and images from the books on the website to other applications, such as Word files.
To print specific pages upon demand.
To collect the work output in personal content folders.
To create a personal bookshelf.

Non-subscribers can carry out searches and view the search results, but only have access to content that is open to the general public.

Registration and purchase of a private subscription is through the website.The following prices apply:

Subscription for Kotar (reference books):
$5 per month for a recurring monthly subscription or
$50 for an annual subscription.

Purchase of an institutional subscription for schools is through CET’s Customer Relations Center, telephone 1-800-366-555 or e-mail: sherut@cet.ac.il

Purchase of an institutional subscription for institutions other than schools, and information about subscription packages available to academic institutions, public libraries and other organizations, is through CET’s Customer Relations Center, telephone 1-800-366-555 or e-mail: sherut@cet.ac.il