Self-Archiving JSTOR OCR'd Retrospective Publications

From: David Goodman <dgoodman_at_PHOENIX.PRINCETON.EDU>
Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2001 00:38:08 -0500

JSTOR is primarily an archive of non-current publications. Its arrangements
with most publishers provide that the publisher will make the journal
available to JSTOR after a 5 year (or similar period) and will in the
meantime publish it, paper, electronically, or whatever, through other
channels. Of course, to some extent this is an artificial distinction, but
one necessary in order to get the older material archived.
There is at this point no single place to go to find all the
publications, print and electronic, current and older, formal and
informal, in almost all fields of study.

One of the benefits of archives such as are discussed in this forum will
be to provide them, and many very interesting methods of keeping track of
the items and facilitate locating them
are being developed, but it would be a mistake to assume that they exist
already. As a librarian, I have learned that it is much easier to figure
out how to store information published in conventional journals than to
figure out how to locate them again when needed. This will also be true
under any of the reformed systems discussed. The problem of
retrieval increases at a much faster rate than the problem of storage as
the amount and diversity of material increases.

Of course, I agree completely with Stevan that the initial step is to get
the material there in the first place.


 David Goodman, Princeton University Biology Library
dgoodman_at_princeton.edu 609-258-3235
Received on Wed Jan 03 2001 - 19:17:43 GMT