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JSTOR announces Alumni Access program, extending access to scholarship on JSTOR

JSTOR is pleased to announce a new Alumni Access program, which enables participating higher education institutions to provide their alumni with access to their JSTOR archive collections.  This is an important next step in our ongoing efforts to extend access to scholarship to individuals around the world, and we are delighted to have the opportunity to partner with our more than 3,000 university and college libraries in this effort.

The launch of the Alumni Access program follows a successful 3-year pilot that was undertaken with nearly 50 institutions, including public and private institutions, US and overseas universities, and theological seminaries. This pilot helped JSTOR and our partner libraries understand the implementation issues and to develop an approach that we believe will be valuable and sustainable. The feedback from both pilot institutions and their alumni has been overwhelmingly positive.

“By far the most frequent question asked by Smith College alumnae is ‘How do I access the library’s databases from off-campus?’, commented Pamela Skinner, head of collection development at Smith College Libraries. “Before participating in the Alumni Access pilot, our canned reply was ‘I’m sorry, but you can’t.’ Now we’re able to give a very different answer, and the response from our alumnae has been overwhelmingly enthusiastic.”

“Now THAT is kindness,” posted a Smith College alumna. “Many alums do not have access to research libraries, and an Alumnae Association that recognizes that info gap is really moving with the times.”

Participating in Alumni Access
While the Alumni Access Program will officially launch in January 2013, JSTOR will turn on access and waive the Annual Access Fee (AAF) for the remainder of 2012. The Alumni Access participation fee is 10% of the institution’s total AAF. The program is open to eligible higher education institutions worldwide; please contact us for eligibility requirements. Participating schools must support the bifurcation of alumni usage from their main account.

To learn more about participating in the Alumni Access program, please contact us today or visit our website.