UC Chosen for JSTOR Paper Repository
The University of California (UC) has signed a contract with JSTOR to serve as one of two major university repositories of complete paper back runs of all JSTOR journals. The project will be based at the Southern Regional Library Facility on UCLA's campus.
This agreement offers a number of benefits to the UC libraries. It supports the libraries' ongoing collaborative efforts to de-duplicate holdings and develop shared print collections, which maximizes both scarce shelf space and limited collections budgets. The repository will contain the full run of each journal, of which UC will retain ownership. In order to preserve the materials in the best possible condition, users will be able to access a volume in it only if the volume cannot be obtained through other means.
Established as a non-profit organization in 1995, JSTOR provides online access to fully searchable page images of nearly five hundred journals. Subject areas represented include archaeology, area studies, business, classics, cultural studies, ecology and botany, economics, education, folklore, general science, history, language and literature, law, mathematics and statistics, music, political science, psychology, public policy and administration, religion, sociology, and the visual and performing arts.
Because digital archival standards and computing technology continue to evolve, JSTOR has created the repositories so that original paper copies will continue to be available if rescanning is required. The repositories will include all 353 titles available through JSTOR as of October 2003. Issues will be added to stay current with each title's "moving wall," which is the period between the most recently published issue of a journal and the latest issue available through JSTOR. That period, which is generally between three and five years, was instituted to balance publishers and researchers needs.
