An important part of establishing a trusted electronic archive of journal literature is to insure that the original paper volumes are protected and preserved. At JSTOR, we have long expected that a number of large research and national libraries around the world would be likely candidates to fulfill this role. As a starting point, we thought it important to help establish a repository of titles in the JSTOR archive and to explore the possibility that one organization might play a coordinating role in this effort.

In 1998, we began conversations with the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) about the possibility of CRL playing such a role. In May 2000, CRL and JSTOR formally launched a joint initiative - the JSTOR Deposit Program - to acquire on deposit the print copies of every journal available in the JSTOR archive. According to Kevin M. Guthrie, President of JSTOR:

JSTOR has several levels of backup for its electronic archive and is committed to ensuring their continued accessibility by migrating that data and the delivery systems as technologies evolve. Nevertheless, the original paper copies are the source material of the database, and preserving them is equally important. The Center for Research Libraries is an institution founded to serve the library community that has been a trusted guardian of collections for over 50 years. CRL is perfectly positioned to play a lead role in this effort to preserve these journals, and we are pleased to be working with them.

Located adjacent to the University of Chicago, CRL is a not-for-profit consortium of colleges, universities, and libraries that collects, preserves and makes available important research materials that would otherwise be difficult to access. Beverly Lynch, Interim President of the Center for Research Libraries, explains:

The primary mission of CRL is to support scholarship through the cooperative acquisition, preservation, and development of important national collections. We see this collaboration with JSTOR as advancing this mission in a new way, providing assistance to all academic libraries in the areas of collection management and preservation. CRL is the logical place for this repository, based on its experience and expertise in managing deposits of this type. We believe that the ongoing CRL-JSTOR partnership will contribute to the development of this major resource for scholars throughout the country, and to the benefit all academic libraries, even those that do not belong to CRL.

The JSTOR Deposit Program launched in the spring of 2000 thanks to a donation by the University of Arizona. After consulting with faculty members in the Sociology department at Arizona, who agreed to act as a test case, university librarians shipped nine sociology titles to CRL in the fall.

"JSTOR presents us with an opportunity to save long-term costs by removing little-used or duplicate material from shelves," says Carla Stoffle, Director of Libraries at the University of Arizona and Vice Chair of the CRL Board of Directors. She continues, "For the most part, libraries haven't yet availed themselves of these savings. One of the reasons is that we must be sure that there are adequate arrangements in place to protect both the electronic and paper versions of the journals. The new CRL-JSTOR deposit effort addresses the potential concern about preservation of the print volumes."

Increasingly, faculty and students are relying on JSTOR for access to older journal literature and are no longer consulting the volumes on local library shelves. This offers the opportunity to move the journals to off-site storage or even to consider de-accessing. In the Arizona case, the nine sets of Sociology journals occupied 56 linear feet of space, or approximately 19 shelves. The entire JSTOR collection occupies somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 linear feet of shelf space.

"The JSTOR Deposit Program provides an extra level of assurance that the paper versions of every journal are safe," notes Eileen Fenton, JSTOR's Director of Production. She adds, "In addition, it might present alternatives for some libraries with incomplete runs, or that don't have the option of off-site storage, because they know the print volumes will be preserved."

Another institution participating in the project is Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. According to Vaswati R. Sinha, Acquisitions/Serials Librarian at the Skillman Library, the college has the potential to donate to JSTOR a few thousand volumes dating back to the last quarter of the 19th century. The natural concerns of faculty and librarians about relying on electronic journals have been addressed, she says:

Until recently, there would have been hesitation on the part of faculty to see journals removed. In the past two years, however, there has been such an upsurge in the use of digital journals that people are increasingly comfortable with this step. Sending these little-used journals to the JSTOR print archive will free up shelf space for materials that are consulted more frequently. We really feel it's an honor to participate in this way.

Ultimately, JSTOR intends to assist in establishing an appropriate number of repositories around the world modeled on the JSTOR Deposit Program. One interesting discussion related to this topic is the draft CLIR report from the Task Force on the Artifact in Library Collections, available at http://www.clir.org/pubs/abstract/pub103abst.html.

Once the program is established fully, it is hoped that the CRL partnership will also assist JSTOR's process to locate and acquire back issues needed for digitization. Although JSTOR obtains copies of its journals from a range of sources, it frequently is difficult to locate every issue of every journal. (More information on journal issues needed by JSTOR can be found at www.jstor.org/about/issues/)

The JSTOR Deposit Program benefits everyone involved, notes John Kiplinger, Senior Production Librarian at JSTOR: "libraries can donate materials to address local space concerns, JSTOR can more efficiently locate back issues for digitization, and the community's general interest in preserving the paper volumes for the long-term will be addressed by storing them in repositories like CRL."

If your library would like to donate back issues to the JSTOR Deposit Program, please contact John Kiplinger at jkip@jstor.org. For more information on depositing materials at CRL, contact Patricia J. Finney at finney@crlmail.uchicago.edu.

More information on the JSTOR Deposit Program is available at http://wwwcrl.uchicago.edu/info/JSTOR/CRLJSTOR.htm

Last updated on September 8, 2006