Date:
5/26/2003
Contact: Wendel Sloan at 505.562.2253
PORTALES--The Golden Library at Eastern New Mexico University has subscribed to a huge electronic database of 322 academic journals. JSTOR was established in 1995 as an independent, not-for-profit organization. It is currently operated by the University of Michigan.
"It consists of the most scholarly journals available," said Melveta Walker, director of ENMU's library. It helps keep the students' research from being 'dumbed down' from using internet sources alone. This actually makes our resources comparable to research institutions like UNM and Texas Tech."
Journals in JSTOR include ones from American studies, African studies, archaeology, Asian studies, classical studies, ecology, economics, education, finance, geography, history, history of science, language and literature, Latin American studies, mathematics, Middle East studies, philosophy, political science, population studies, Slavic studies, sociology, and statistics.
JSTOR began as an effort to ease the increasing problems faced by libraries seeking to provide adequate stack space for the back-files of scholarly journals. The basic idea was to convert the back issues of paper journals into electronic formats that would allow savings in space and costs.
Articles contained in the database have to be at least two years old so that they do not compete directly with the current journals from which the database is compiled," according to Ms. Walker.
Several disciplines from Eastern went in together to purchase the database subscription, which has to be renewed each year. These included the departments of history, languages and literature, modern languages, sociology, and anthropology.
JSTOR can be found on ENMU's home page at www.enmu.edu, then by clicking "Academics," "Library," "On-Line Periodical Databases," then "JSTOR."
For more information, call Ms. Walker at 505.562.2624.