Our history
In 1994, the Internet was in its early days, and William G. Bowen—then president of the Mellon Foundation—conceived of JSTOR to solve a growing problem: university and college libraries were running out of space for expanding scholarly collections.
His idea was transformative: convert printed journals into digital form and store them in a shared online archive. This innovation helped reduce storage costs, free up physical space, and vastly improve access to research.
JSTOR was founded in 1995, and decades later, JSTOR is a thriving nonprofit working with more than 14,000 libraries, museums, and publishers worldwide. Through our products and services, JSTOR has transformed access to scholarly materials—including journals, books, images and other primary sources—to reach more than 100 million users each year.
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What will the next 30 years bring?
Explore more about JSTOR’s evolution and impact.
ITHAKA Fall 2026 Community Letter: AI at JSTOR
For decades, JSTOR has helped people discover trusted scholarship, understand scholarly context, benefit from library-supported access, and connect with original sources. As using AI becomes part of the research, teaching, and learning process, grounding the work in those principles becomes even more important.
What’s new in JSTOR Stewardship: September 2026
Meet the newest JSTOR Stewardship charter participants, explore distinctive collections now available on JSTOR, and discover recent conversations shaping the future of digital stewardship.
Northern Kentucky University joins JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services charter program
NKU joins the JSTOR Stewardship charter community to expand access to distinctive collections, build sustainable digital workflows, and connect materials with students, researchers, and regional communities.
What happened when the first Path to Open books became open access?
When 100 Path to Open titles became freely available worldwide, their readership quickly extended far beyond the institutions that had previously provided access.
Building capacity together: Exploring collaborative strategies for digital collections stewardship
Digital collections stewardship depends on more than technology. Lee Dotson examines how SCELC, its member institutions, and JSTOR Stewardship are sharing expertise, support, and infrastructure to make distinctive collections more discoverable, accessible, and sustainable.
Yeshiva University moves to JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services for digital asset management, preservation, and access
Yeshiva University is migrating its digital collections from Islandora to JSTOR’s unified platform for digital asset management, preservation, and discovery.
University of Tennessee at Martin moves to JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services, joins charter program
The University of Tennessee at Martin is adopting JSTOR Stewardship to strengthen preservation, discovery, and AI-assisted collections processing while joining a collaborative charter community. 27 words
Coastal Carolina University joins JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services charter community
CCU joins JSTOR Stewardship’s charter program to build durable digital collections infrastructure, expand access, and explore AI-assisted processing with JSTOR Seeklight.
Boston Architectural College joins Tier 3 charter program of JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services
Boston Architectural College joins JSTOR Stewardship’s Tier 3 charter program, adding JSTOR Seeklight and helping shape responsible, AI-assisted approaches to stewardship.