JSTOR is a major non-profit archive
of 1,400 academic journals, some reaching back to the 1600’s. It is now
offering free access to large amounts of its material. Anyone can sign up for a JSTORE account and
read up to three articles for free every two weeks. You cannot print them however unlike paid
subscribers who can look at an unlimited number of items.
JSTOR
was one of first data archives start in 1995. It has since its founding been
devoted to the helping libraries, especially research and academic libraries,
deal with the constant growth of the number of academic journals in every
field. It was originally funded by the
Andrew W. Mellow Foundation and subscriptions.
It is now part of ITHAKA a non-profit organization devoted “to helping
the academic community take full advantage of… networking technologies. “ and collecting subscriptions from 7000
institutions in 153 countries.
In 2011 it began carrying books.
When I
was working as a reference librarian, I always referred students researching
historical, theological, or literately subjects to JSTOR because it had material
going back literally centuries.
The
advanced search on this new feature allows you to exclude material you cannot
read, and exclude book reviews, which can take up an annoying amount of space
in broad searches.
