Posts: 8,090
Threads: 505
Joined: Jan 2005
Reputation:
0
JSTOR seems a brilliant resource for research, and every time I'm looking for something very specific on Google I always get a tease of a scan of one page that seems to be the doorway to my answers ... and it's shut :evil:
I'm confused by the myriad numbers of ways to get access as a private individual. A journal subscription route seems to be limited to that journal's articles up until two or three years ago, but of course I want to be able to search for relevant articles to my research through the whole of JSTOR.
Can anyone recommend the best route to take, please?
TARBICvS/Jim Bowers
A A A DESEDO DESEDO!
Posts: 2,237
Threads: 275
Joined: Feb 2001
Reputation:
33
Quote:Can anyone recommend the best route to take, please?
Become disgustingly rich very quickly. Failing that, JSTOR itself only seems to manage individual journal subscriptions so you'd need to buy one for every title that interests you. I don't know about you, but some of my best coups in libraries have come from just browsing through the stacks amongst serials I would never normally look at (a pleasure increasingly denied with the prevalence of closed stacks and the need to request things sight-unseen).
The main route in (in the UK at least) seems to be through an academic institution that has access to JSTOR (and other esubscriptions [ouch!]) through the Athens login scheme run by a not-for-profit called Eduserv.
Sadly, the whole system is biased against the individual with an academic interest who is outside the acdemic establishment (my egalitarian slip may be showing...). I am lucky that, by virtue of an honorary lectureship, I have temporary access through Athens. However, for a long time I didn't (and it was only by digging that I found I was entitled to it) and it isn't permanent, so I remain interested in this little conundrum. Perhaps there is a case for Romanarmy.com getting a corporate membership?! RAC/RAT can certainly be argued to be an educational resource IMHO. I wonder what it costs per annum – any thoughts, Jasper?
Mike Bishop
You know my method. It is founded upon the observance of trifles
Blogging, tweeting, and mapping Hadrian\'s Wall... because it\'s there
Posts: 326
Threads: 7
Joined: Apr 2005
Reputation:
0
I think our students on Continuing Education courses may be able to get an Athens account, and if this is the case, and if such students can get Athens accounts through other such institutions, that may be the cheapest and easiest way to get access to JSTOR. If if if... as one of those lucky bastards with a completely safeguarded Athens account I really don't know for definite.
OTOH, Jim, you live in London. You could, if you wished and were prepared to cough up however much the subscription now is, become a member of the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies, receive JRS or Britannia, and use the Joint Library of the Hellenic and Roman Societies and the Institute for Classical Studies, which is in Senate House, and has an extensive journal collection. And probably JSTOR available through its computers.
But that doesn't help when you want to curl up in bed and read early 20th century articles on Roman history on your laptop.
Posts: 8,090
Threads: 505
Joined: Jan 2005
Reputation:
0
Thanks, you two.
Mike, I think the RAT account is an excellent idea, you only have to look here at the requests for papers and their arcane knowledge.
Kate, they were the first choice for JSTOR access if I need to go through a society, but I'm concerned I would only get access to their articles and no others. I'll check them out some more.
Anyways, thanks very much, and perhaps I should enroll on a night class at one of the uni's here, which has been suggested to me before. I just find it unbelievable that public access to these resources is so difficult to get hold of, when it should only be getting easier :?
TARBICvS/Jim Bowers
A A A DESEDO DESEDO!
Posts: 15,118
Threads: 417
Joined: Mar 2002
Reputation:
79
Quote:Sadly, the whole system is biased against the individual with an academic interest who is outside the acdemic establishment (my egalitarian slip may be showing...).
Oh no, you are so right!! I still curse the day when my university moved the whole floor of archaeology, Latin and ancient history to a depot and replaced it with (oh horror) a collection of images of organs..... :evil:
Now I can't browse through reports anymore, nor leaf through books looking for good material. Yes, I know the feeling of sheer happiness when you happen to find an interesting article in a seemingly uninteresting periocal!
Good books cost way too much because the numbers published are always too small, meant as they are mainly for the academic community, plus leftovers for people like us. Publications are hidden in thos magazines which we have bad access to, and are too few considered for internet publication. Why not publish all those scientific journals on the internet? It would be great for science! Why must we pay enormous sums for magazines when we already pays through our taxes? Those publications could be much larger too, if not bound to a physical paper form, so many more studenst an scientits could get their papers published..
I guess it is not in the interest of those who control all this. Egalitarian slip my foot - this is reality! Free the scientific papers from the academic stranglehold I say!
(OK doctor sir, coming down from my box doctor sir, no need for the straightjacket, I'll come willingly..) 
Posts: 6,734
Threads: 489
Joined: Mar 2001
Reputation:
27
Hi Mike,
That's certainly a good idea worth investigating. Worthwhile for me too, as the enddate of my membership to the academic community is rapidly drawing closer.
Hmmm, it seems the only link I can find to a page about the fees, is invalid. Interesting...
Posts: 489
Threads: 29
Joined: Aug 2002
Reputation:
2
Hi,
well, I understand your frustration very well. Here in Czech Republic the libraries are very (I mean VERY) poorly supplied with books about Roman warfare. With journals it's a little bit better, but certainly still not very good. I must order the absolute majority of books and many of journal articles from abroad (buy them or through international interlibrary loan system), which is rather expensive. Yes, my university has access to JSTOR, but probably to some cheaper, restricted form, because I can't get articles for example from Journal of Roman Studies or Britannia.
It's quite difficult and expensive to get the needed literature here. 
Alexandr
Posts: 1,550
Threads: 81
Joined: Oct 2006
Reputation:
49
Quote:Oh no, you are so right!! I still curse the day when my university moved the whole floor of archaeology, Latin and ancient history to a depot and replaced it with (oh horror) a collection of images of organs..... :evil:
Now I can't browse through reports anymore, nor leaf through books looking for good material. Yes, I know the feeling of sheer happiness when you happen to find an interesting article in a seemingly uninteresting periocal!
Good books cost way too much because the numbers published are always too small, meant as they are mainly for the academic community, plus leftovers for people like us. Publications are hidden in those magazines which we have bad access to, and are too few considered for internet publication. Why not publish all those scientific journals on the internet? It would be great for science! Why must we pay enormous sums for magazines when we already pays through our taxes? Those publications could be much larger too, if not bound to a physical paper form, so many more studenst an scientits could get their papers published..
I guess it is not in the interest of those who control all this. Egalitarian slip my foot - this is reality! Free the scientific papers from the academic stranglehold I say!
(OK doctor sir, coming down from my box doctor sir, no need for the straightjacket, I'll come willingly..)
The matters discussed here sounds ominous. I'll be done my undergraduate degree in a year and a half, then probably working for a year or two before I go on to grad school. I'll have to be doing research without the advantages of student status for some time. It seems like the Internet ought to be making access to these things easier, not harder. Its hardly like academic journals are in business to make profit, either.
We have a shortage of library space over here, and the new supplimentary library building will, as far as I can tell, contain no books just study space, computers, 'electronic resources,' and a prominent plaque with the donor's name.
Recently I have been coming into contact with the worrying scarcity of some academic or military-historical books (the only place in Canada they could find Phil Barker's Armies of the Macedonian and Punic Wars was the Royal Military College in Ontario!) and the small print runs common. Something ought to be done about that. The whole point of studying the arcane (other than one's own pleasure in doing it) is to advance human knowledge, not what a few specialists know.
Nullis in verba
I have not checked this forum frequently since 2013, but I hope that these old posts have some value. I now have a blog on books, swords, and the curious things humans do with them.
Posts: 200
Threads: 5
Joined: Apr 2006
Reputation:
0
Quote:Hi Mike,
That's certainly a good idea worth investigating. Worthwhile for me too, as the enddate of my membership to the academic community is rapidly drawing closer.
Hmmm, it seems the only link I can find to a page about the fees, is invalid. Interesting...
Jasper,
Have you taken a look here: http://www.jstor.org/about/participation.html
They are very cagey about their prices because the cost of a subscription is based on a number of factors, the number of journals to be included, the size of the institution in $$, and the number of users, among other things. I am a serials librarian at an academic library and let me tell you when it comes time to renegotiate the contracts an awful lot of horse trading goes on. Any full-text source like JStor tends to be pretty expensive, but who knows, if we were to pursue it, RAT might be able to work out something that would wortk for us.
Hope this is a help,
Lucianus
_______
L.E. Pearson
L.E. Pearson
|
