Hidden Treasure Part 1



JSTOR Part 1
JSTOR, short for Journal Storage, is a not-for-profit digital library founded in 1995.  JSTOR includes books, primary sources, letter, scholarly papers and current issues of academic journals.  JSTOR provides a full-text search for almost 2,000 academic journals.  According to their website:
“JSTOR currently includes more than 2,000 academic journals, dating back to the first volume ever published, along with thousands of monographs and other materials relevant for education. We have digitized more than 50 million pages and continue to digitize approximately 3 million pages annually.”(1)
JSTOR does not hold the copyright to any of their content awarded to them nor does JSTOR request exclusive rights to the content of articles.  Some of the articles are public domain, and these articles are free.  JSTOR digitized millions of pages each year while providing access to people around the world. 
There are two parts to JSTOR, one part is subscription and the other part of JSTOR is free.  In addition, one may sign up for a 14 day free trial offer with a limit download of three articles.  Another way to access JSTOR is at your local library or college, of which is available at 9,200 institutions worldwide.(1)
The JSTOR website explains the free journal content:
“On September 6, 2011, we made journal content in JSTOR published prior to 1923 in the United States and prior to 1870 elsewhere freely available to anyone, anywhere in the world.  This ‘Early Journal Content’ includes discourse and scholarship in the arts and humanities, economics and politics, and in mathematics and other sciences.  It includes nearly 500,000 articles from more than 200 journals. This represents 6% of the content on JSTOR.”(2)

How can JSTOR help in family history research?  Articles in JSTOR are searchable by keyword text and other search perimeters, allowing family history researchers to search locations, occupations, time-periods and other keywords that may pertain to their family and their family history. The advanced search in JSTOR allows browsers to narrow searches by item type:  articles, books, pamphlets, reviews, miscellaneous, or by publication title or ISBN.  In addition, advanced searches may be narrowed by discipline.   JSTOR also contains papers and reviews written about books.  This is especially helpful if you find an unknown published book pertaining to your family.  

JSTOR may give the family historian valuable background information, historical information, statistical information or even direct family information.  The search engine is easy to use and is very accurate. The website is user-friendly and most of the articles may be downloaded in PDF form.
(1) JSTOR online, accessed 21 January 2015, http://about.jstor.org/10things
(2) JSTOR online, accessed 21 January 2015, http://about.jstor.org/service/early-journal-content-0

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