Welcome to our JSTOR tutorial!
JSTOR is a fun database to search for sources in the sciences, education, history, literature, and arts. First, you need to know what it does.
Click the "Next" button to continue.
Would you rather buy this month's copy of your favorite magazine, or one from six months ago?
Most people would buy the latest, right?
Other databases keep the most recent articles. JSTOR exists because it keeps older issues of periodicals from a few years ago.
It doesn't have the latest research, but if you're in the social sciences or humanities, an article from years or decades ago might have good information for you.
For this search, I need an article on movies about the JFK assassination. I remember one that came out several years ago, so I'll look for information on that.
We'll start at the library home page:
http://library.cortland.edu
Under "Find Articles," click on "Databases: by Title."
This is an alphabetical list of the library's databases. Take a look around if you like, or just click on "J".
Click on the link to JSTOR to get started.
For the last step, click on "Search" next to the eye. Next, we'll be searching JSTOR.
This is JSTOR's basic search screen. I think we can handle that advanced search...
Let's start out with the words we know we want in the search. How about "JFK" and "assassination"?
You don't have to put an "AND" between those, in case you're wondering.
What next? We don't have an exact phrase, so we can skip that.
We want to look for movies. Think for a minute about what some good words could be to find articles about them.
Those should be good. Let's look at some other options.
I could check these boxes if I wanted a particular author or title. I don't, though.
I know I do want articles and reviews.
We could look for articles with particular dates, if we had any. There's also a list of topics below, in case we just want to search one subject.
By clicking on the plus sign, we open up a list of journals within that field. We could then select particular titles that might be of interest.
For now, though, I think we're fine. Let's close this list and run the search.
These are our results. We can sort them by date or title, but "relevance" is probably best for what we're doing.
Let's look at the list. This top item looks - weird, doesn't it? Plus, it's only one page long. Maybe we should keep going.
Ah. This one looks better.
When you click on the article, JSTOR opens a graphics file showing one page of text. At the top is a list of pages that contain one of the words in your search. If you click on these, you can move to that page of the article.
Yes, this looks good.
Now, we need to get this article so we can use it in our project.
Click on the light gray "Download" link at the top of the page.
We have some options for download. Most people haven't heard of TIFF or Postscript, so PDF (or Acrobat) is probably the best choice.
I'll choose high quality, because I have a fast connection.
Now we're inside Acrobat Reader. The page we're looking at is the title page JSTOR includes in all files.
The article title page...
...is right here.
By clicking on this icon, we can save a copy of the PDF to our desktop, a disk, or another place.
This icon will print this to the printer to which your computer is hooked up. In the library, you can use your ID to make printouts.
Do NOT use the "Print" command under the "File" menu. That will give you one, mostly blank, page.
If your email software is set up at home, you can send yourself a copy of the document.
The library's computers aren't set up for this. What to do?
First, save yourself a copy to the library computer.
Saving to the Desktop makes a file easy to find.
After saving it, you can open your webmail and attach it to a file.
That's JSTOR. Run your own searches, try out new things, and don't forget to ask a librarian if you need help.
Microsoft product screen shots reprinted with permission from Microsoft Corporation. Adobe product screen shots reprinted with permission from Adobe Systems Incorporated.