Back to school means back to researching! In this series we will be highlighting the features of some of our more unique research databases, for our students to better understand how to use them and to gain a better idea of the resources we have here at Shafer Library.
To start off our series we will be looking at the scholarly research staple, JSTOR!
JSTOR is an Online Library of Academic Research
With more than 12 million journal articles, books, and primary sources, JSTOR is a robust learning tool available for University of Findlay Students and Faculty.
Find Articles and eBooks From Leading Field of Study
Covering over 75 disciplines, JSTOR provides access to information in journals on law, history, film studies, cultural studies, evolutionary biology, and much more! It also has an 'Image search' feature!
Keep All of Your Research Together With "My Workspace"
Create your own personal workspace where you can save your JSTOR articles. Take the stress out of building your bibliography and use My Workspace to automatically generate citations--you can even include links from web content outside of JSTOR-- just be sure to double check them before you hit submit on Canvas!
Find that Metadata
Constellate, a project of JSTOR Labs, accommodates text analysis and digital humanities research by providing datasets for the journals, books, research reports, and pamphlets in the digital library. Constellate offers text mining of content from multiple platforms, built-in visualizations, an analytics lab, and text analysis tutorials.
The JSTOR Understanding Series
This is a research tool from JSTOR Labs that connects primary texts with journal articles and book chapters on JSTOR that cite those texts. Building on a previous project, Understanding Shakespeare, this beta release includes ten key works of British literature, the King James Bible, and all Shakespeare plays and sonnets. This tool can help foster closer readings and engagement with classic texts, and help students get started with analyzing and using primary sources in their own research
Accessing JSTOR
JSTOR is available via the Shafer Library website on our Databases and Research Guide page and can instantly be accessed at jstor.org while on campus. Off campus access will require you to log in with UFNet username and password.
JSTOR also offers tutorials and user support to help students learn how to efficiently and effectively use the resources they provide. Check out their student search help guide here!
JSTOR Recap
Strengths:
- Large pool of resources from a variety of disciplines.
- Built in ways to save citations or cite a resource.
- Popular with students and academics.
- Easy to use advanced search features.
Weaknesses:
- Lots of disciplines means searches require good filter use.
- Can take a while to get accustomed to using its search features as it isn't an EBSCO database like students may be used to.
- No ability to search only for Peer Reviewed Articles.
Recommended for:
- Undergraduates, Graduate students, and Faculty.