In October 1924, Shtif drafted a memorandum entitled, "Vegn a yidishn akademishn institut" ("About a Yiddish Academic Institute"), in which he outlined a plan for an academic Yiddish institute and library. He proposed that the institute contain four scholarly sections: one for Yiddish philology; one for Jewish history; one to deal with social and economic issues; and a pedagogical section, which would include a bibliographic center, for collecting and recording publications in Yiddish. Shtif argued that the creation of an academic institute to support scholarship was a necessary step in the growth of Yiddish culture: "There arrives the time when every people at a certain level of cultural development must and wishes to participate directly in the scholarly work of the entire intellectual world."