JSTOR Participation Information Meeting for Secondary Schools

Originally conceived as a project of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundaiton, JSTOR was established as a not-for-profit organizatioin in 1995.  Instituttions participating in this collaborative project were mainly colleges and universities interested in preserving core journals from the humanities and social sciences.  With all journals digitized from Volume 1, Issue 1, JSTOR provides a deep archive of academic, peer-reviewed journal literature from more than 300.  Since the archive was made avaiable in 1997, over 1500 institutions from more than seventy countries have elected to participate in JSTOR.  In 002, the archive was searched over 80 million times, and over 10 million full-text articles were printed. 

The JSTOR Secondary School Pilot Project (2000-2002) involved collaborating with teachers and librarians from a core group of sixteen high schools in the country.  What we learned over the course of the project proved that there was significant value for JSTOR at the high school level.  Working with - and learning to work with - JSTOR content had a very positive impact on student scholarship.  In particular, they welcomed use of JSTOR as a way of guiding students toward substantive online resources.  Furthermore, teachers consistently used SJTOR to deepen knowledge of their own areas of research interest. 

Based on the success of the pilot project, we created a participation structure for U.S. secondary schools this past fall.  While we are still early in our outreach, response has been quite positive.  The date, twenty-three schools in eleven states have become Charter Participants in JSTOR.  In New York, these include Collegiate School, Ethical Culture Fieldston School, Hackley School, Horace Mann, Nichols School, Poly Prep Country Day School, Riverdale Country School., Scarsdale High School, and The Dalton School. 

Our goal remains to continue learning as much about this community as possible, while sharing the knowledge we have gained as well.  We would like to invite you to attend a meeting with fellow memebers of the secondary shcool community, to learn more about JSTOR.  We are very much looking forward to this opportunity, graciously faciliated by Scarsdale High School, one of the schools in our pilot project. 

R.S.V.P. by April 3, 2003 to Janet Jamal at the School Library System office regarding your attendance (Phone 345-8500, ext. 122; Fax 592-4438; E-mail jjamal@swboces.org).

Luncheon will be served

Details about JSTOR Participation are available at http://www.jstor.org/about/participation.html