Among singular and unique items found in the archives of the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, some documents testify to mundane practices that are part of institutional everyday life. An example of such items is the various letterheads of the Katz Center in all its incarnations (from the Dropsie College through the Annenberg Institute). While one may think of letterheads as mere "frames" of the actual—important singular and unique—content of letters, they in fact deserve much scholarly attention if one wants to examine institutional history, in this case a key institution in the history of Jewish Studies. The letterheads presented here tell an institutional story that kept transforming in the course of a century in ways that reveal some key tensions in the way Jewish Studies developed as a field.

One can begin by reflecting on the transformations in the title of the letterheads: the letterhead of "The Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning Philadelphia" demonstrates that the key factor in determining this institute's scope related to language. It may indicate a specific concern with textual material, making one wonder if Yiddish, Ladino and Judeo-Arabic cultures would have been conceived as 'cognate.' When Dropsie University transformed into the "Annenberg Research Institute for Judaic and Near Eastern Studies,", one notices a shift from language to a more general idea of Judaism which appears in conjunction with a clear geographic indicator; while the literature and history of American Jewry seems to fall under the category of 'Judaic,' it seems beyond the key concept of an institute that examined also the 'Near East.' Once the Institute was encompassed as part of the University of Pennsylvania, the general form of "Judaic Studies" remained, leaving more room for interpretation. Under the leadership of David Ruderman another transformation of the Center is apparent in the letterhead—the addition of a small but important adjective, 'advanced'—an immediate reminiscence of the Center for Advanced Studies in Princeton and other centers that were modeled after it.

Interestingly, individual names on the letterheads play an important role only in the Annenberg Institute letterhead and do not play a role in the other letterheads. With the integration of the center into the University of Pennsylvania system, this has changed: the growing prominence of the Penn iconography secured the institutional authority of the Center; although the Center was housed in the same building of the Annenberg Institute (both letterheads relate to the same address on Walnut street), the letterheads convey an important shift from being tied to prominent individual figures to a well-established academic institution.

Other changes in fonts and graphic sensibilities add to the idea that letterheads are not just containers of messages; rather they deliver other messages that are very clear to those who compose them and are clear in much more subtle ways to those who use them (or read them) in their scholarly everyday life.