Columbia University Press Joins the JSTOR Book Initiative
We are very excited to have joined the Books at JSTOR initiative which will help to make university press books more accessible online. Here is the press release describing Books at JSTOR and the involvement of other university presses:
Books at JSTOR Grows, Adding Prominent Academic Publishers Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, and California University Presses To Make Scholarly Books Available on JSTOR
Four prominent academic publishers in the United States announced plans today to bring their scholarly books online at JSTOR, one of the most well-known and widely used scholarly research sites. This is the second wave of presses to join the Books at JSTOR initiative. The initial group included Chicago, Minnesota, North Carolina, Princeton, and Yale University Presses.
“The digital landscape is taking shape for academic books, and we are thrilled to be partnering with a set of publishers that share our commitment to disseminating superior scholarship and an organization that has a great track record of meeting the needs of libraries and researchers,” said Alison Mudditt, Director of University of California Press.
JSTOR was founded in 1995 and began archiving and bringing online the back issues of leading journals in economics and history, including The American Economic Review, Econometrica, The American Historical Review, and The William and Mary Quarterly, among others. The focus is similar with books. Publishers are being invited to join the initiative based on the relevance of their titles to the content on JSTOR and importance of their publications to scholars now and in the future – an approach many librarians have come to rely on from JSTOR.
“JSTOR has altered the landscape for academic libraries and their researchers, offering online access to a great variety of high quality scholarship across many disciplines, through a well-known, trusted platform. Books at JSTOR should expand the range of opportunities for libraries to continue to build collections of importance to our users, with confidence in their future viability,” according to David Magier, Associate University Librarian for Collection Development at Princeton University.
The press signings announced today, together with the original group, will result in more than 15,000 front and back list titles being made available at JSTOR. The presses are recognized as leaders in a wide range of disciplines including history, sociology, the arts, business and economics, and the life sciences.
The group also aims to help scholars and students find high quality and relevant books right when they need them. In addition to offering the ability to search across journals and books, JSTOR includes more than 1 million book reviews and a vast number of citations dating back hundreds of years in the 1,400 journals it makes available. The books will be linked with this other content, creating a multitude of pathways through the literature. Michael Spinella, JSTOR Managing Director noted, “We are eager to expose this network, making it easy for faculty and students to find and read books online, contextualize them with other content, and gain a fuller and richer perspective on the scholarly discussion.”
“With JSTOR, we have a unique opportunity for our books to come alive as part of a substantive and growing network of scholarly literature,” added James Jordan, Director of Columbia University Press. “We’re pleased to be part of an effort that will help define how books and journals are used together in the emerging scholarly digital environment.”
Books will be available at JSTOR in spring 2012 and will be preserved in Portico, the leading digital preservation service for the scholarly community. For more information, please read about Books at JSTOR on the JSTOR website.
For more information please contacts
Columbia University Press
Meredith Howard
Publicity Director
mh2306@columbia.edu
212-459-0600 ext 7126