Professor of History
Advisor, Medieval and Renaissance Studies Center
Texas Tech University

 

 

JOHN MCDONALD HOWE

How to Use JSTOR

JSTOR is an electronic archive of almost 2000 journals, including many historical journals.  It has a relatively intuitive interface, and, if needed, there are tutorials.  The "Browse" option on the site produces an alphabetically organized index of the journals stored, a list that sporadically increases.  Note that JSTOR archives only after a particular issue has been in print for five years, a "rolling wall" that provides a space during which the printed version of an article still monopolizes the field, a concession that makes electronic availability less threatening to print journals. The site includes helpful search and browse features.   However, the content is presented in photographed pages, not in text files, so that not all systems can search or copy sections of articles. 

To access JSTOR content, you need to pay.  Fortunately, the Texas Tech University Library maintains an institutional subscription, allowing the Texas Tech community to access JSTOR without charge.   If you log into the University Library system from a Texas Tech account, you will see on the left margin, under "Find Articles," an option for "Databases A-Z."  Select that and you get a page with an alphabet index.  Choose "J," under which you will find an entry into JSTOR When you have located an article, if you want to print it  choose the PDF option--this presents the article in consecutive pages, just as it was originally printed in hard copy, and allows it to be printed in a single operation as a single document, whereas other options require you to print page by page. .