Warden Memorial Library

Martin Methodist College

JSTOR is a full-text multidisciplinary collection of digitally archived, scholarly articles. The 320+ core journals available here start with their first publication; some dating from the 1800's. Each article is displayed (and can be printed) in the PDF file format, preserving the original look of the print version [because this is an "archival collection" most holdings do not include the latest three years of publication].

The steps and screen shots displayed below will show how to access and do a basic search for journal articles using the JSTOR research database via the Martin Methodist College library.

ACCESS

To Access JSTOR

1. Go to the library's home page at http://www.martinmethodist.edu/library.
2. Click on " Databases" in the left side column.
3. Enter your college login and password if you are off campus. If you are on campus, you do not need to sign into any database.
4. Look for "JSTOR" in the table (listed alphabetically) and click on it.
5. You have two options for accessing journal content: Browse or Search by discipline/journal title.

BROWSE

The Browse feature allows you to view a list of subject disciplines and then to see what journals have content that falls within that discipline. Simply click on a subject discipline to see the list of relevant journal titles. At the top of the Browse page (not shown below) there is also an option to view an "Alphabetical List of journals." In either browse option, if you click on a journal title you can then browse through the specific volumes and issues of that publication.

SEARCH

The default search option is the Basic Search, but there are other options as can be seen to the right of the search box in the screen capture below .

• Basic Search: searches the author, title, and full-text of each article.
• Advanced Search: narrows your keyword search by citation field (title, author), type (article, review, etc.), date, journal title, or discipline.
• Expert Search: search using Boolean operators, nested elements and other more complex search syntax.
• Article Locator: if you have a title or other citation information in hand already, this is the quickest way to search using specific fields.
• Search Help: use this for help using this database.

RESULTS

Each page of results offers a variety of information, sort and access options:

• Show: allows you to change the number of results that are displayed on one page. The default is 25. Click the Display button to change the setting.
• Results: shows how many items were found by the search [and how many are displayed on the current page].
• Sort by: allows sorting of results by relevance (the default), publication date (newest to oldest or vice versa) and journal title. Note you have to click the "Sort" button before the results will reflect the sort option chosen.
• Citation Display: each citation includes the title (click on this to access full-text), author (click to search by that author name), journal information, and save/print/download options (see below).

ARTICLE DISPLAY

All articles in JSTOR are displayed in the PDF file format (free Adobe reader software required to view).

Each display page contains options for saving the citation to a marked list (great for creating a bibliography), navigating between pages in the article (Previous Page and Next Page options), navigating to other articles within the same journal issue, and going directly to the location(s) within the article text where your search term(s) appear. In addition, at the top there are links to print or download the article, and so you can return to the list of results (not shown in the screen capture below).

For help using additional and more advanced search and results options, click on the "TIPS" link in the dark red tool bar, located at the very top of each page in the database.

Ask a Librarian for more information, or contact a librarian via e-mail at hrosenbaum@martinmethodist.edu