JSTOR's 2,000th Domestic Participant

JSTOR launched its first collection 10 years ago, with 200 initial library supporters. Today we are proud to announce that we have reached the milestone of 2,000 participating libraries in the U.S., with an almost equal number of participants from outside the U.S. While JSTOR remains a resource that most college and university researchers rely upon, increasingly other communities are finding value in having access to the archival material in JSTOR. In the U.S. more than 350 secondary schools, 250 community colleges, 50 museums, 30 public libraries, and lately a growing number (more than 200) of government and not-for-profit research organizations are JSTOR participants. While this diversity is heartening, JSTOR remains grateful for the initial and continued enthusiastic support of the higher education community in our mission to provide for the long-term preservation of the scholarly material for which we have been entrusted. JSTOR's growth is contingent upon hearing and responding to your voices and encouragement. Thank you.


Training Others to use JSTOR

We are pleased to announce that regularly scheduled online training webinars are now available. Webinars will cover the basics of using the JSTOR search and browse interfaces so you can in turn train patrons to use them. We will also cover statistics reports, citation management, and how to get information or help. READ MORE

Reaching out to Students

Web 2.0 is a collective term for a wide array of community-based, interactive web tools and networking sites found on the Internet. College and High School students spend an increasing amount of time in these online environments. We are experimenting with two of the most popular social networking sites in order to put JSTOR information in the places where students spend their time.

Facebook (a social networking site originally aimed at college students):
We have created a Facebook group for the purpose of pointing students in the direction of helpful information about using JSTOR. The idea is that if a student is working on research late at night and needs help using the JSTOR interface, they may find the Facebook group via a general search and get exactly the information they need. Contents of the JSTOR Information Facebook group include links to JSTOR help pages, a short online tutorial on “How to Search JSTOR”, frequently asked questions and answers, and a link to the JSTOR Search application also on Facebook.


YouTube:
The second venue we chose was YouTube, the enormously popular site that provides users with the ability to upload videos and make them available to the world. Since students are likely to search for almost any topic on YouTube, we uploaded two short video tutorials on searching and browsing JSTOR. So far this has not been as frequently accessed as the Facebook applications, but we believe it is yet another promising avenue for providing information in an online location easily discovered by students.