Spotlight on: JSTOR Access in Prison

The judges have selected a shortlist of three for the ALPSP Impact Award 2024. This year's awards are sponsored by PA EDitorial.

The finalists will be showcased in a lightning session at the ALPSP Conference on 11 September. The winners will be announced at the ALPSP Conference Awards Dinner on 12 September in Manchester.

In this series, we hear from each of the finalists.

Tell us about your organization

At ITHAKA – the successful non-profit behind JSTOR, Constellate, Ithaka S+R, and Portico  –we believe that everyone deserves access to higher education, no matter their resources or circumstances. Our mission is to expand access to knowledge and higher education around the world by working to make it more affordable, to improve outcomes for students and researchers, and to preserve knowledge for future generations.

What is the project/product that you submitted for the Awards? 

JSTOR Access in Prison is a transformational initiative designed to extend access to education and knowledge to the millions of people incarcerated in prisons, jails, and detention centers around the world. With initial support from groups like the Mellon Foundation and Ascendium Philanthropy, we have built a program that helps people expand their horizons, and their post-release opportunities, by giving them access to the same high-quality scholarly resources available to their peers on traditional college campuses. 

Tell us a little about how it works and the team behind it

Thousands of correctional facilities offer at least nominal access to educational programs, but the concrete walls we build to keep people in also keep information out. Access to media is restricted, and media review policies designed to prevent access to harmful or risky material also prevent access to innocuous information or legitimate academic research. Technology limitations further restrict access: Fewer than ten US prison systems allow internet access on government-issued laptops or desktops. 

Effectively, prisons are information deserts. Students in these environments have not had a genuine opportunity to develop research skills or to pursue new ideas and information that might enrich their lives and inspire change. Without access to outside knowledge, their world contracts to the walls of their institution. Without access to knowledge, access to education cannot improve lives. 

JSTOR Access in Prison is changing that with an innovative program that gives people in correctional facilities access to the same scholarly research material available to their peers in traditional college settings. JSTOR is committed to democratizing access to knowledge and helping colleges and universities serve the needs of all of their students, regardless of their circumstances. 

To accommodate the unique concerns of departments of corrections, we offer tiered access options, specialized training materials, and assistance with secure technology and digital devices. Students in the most restrictive settings have access to an “offline” version that provides full search results and the full text of 1,500 of the most-used articles on JSTOR; others have mediated access or full access to the same JSTOR used by their peers on traditional campuses. 

Today, JSTOR is available in more than 1,100 US prisons and nearly 200 prisons in other countries, serving almost a million people. Direct access to scholarly resources helps these students master research skills and encourages academic curiosity. It also reduces administrative burdens on higher education in prison programs, allowing those programs to serve more students. In Australia, one program expanded its enrollment from 40 students to 200 thanks to these economies of scale. 

In what ways do you think it demonstrates innovation?

The carceral system is currently one where many who leave end up returning. This reality falls short of our collective desire for incarcerated people who serve time to effectively and productively reintegrate into society. Doing so is not possible without personal growth and some level of hope and aspiration. Through the JSTOR Access in Prison initiative, we are working to enable growth and change through knowledge for what is largely an unseen and underserved population. 

While students in prisons are like those on college campuses, their learning settings could not be more different. We have been intentional about understanding the unique needs of these environments – the concerns of departments of corrections, the financial and technical limitations of the potential users, and the intellectual curiosity of people who are often getting their first realistic chance at higher education. With that understanding, we have worked to deliver a program that is responsive to everyone’s concerns and provides broad access to high-quality scholarship that supports learning and empowers learners.

We also lead with our mission by working to expand access to this population as broadly and affordably as possible. Our financial model is focused on ethical, sustainable pricing; we actively avoid the pernicious and often predatory practices that have dominated this space. Existing vendors charge exorbitant fees to departments of corrections and content providers to establish access and then charge high usage fees directly to the end users, who can ill afford to pay and have no access to free market alternatives. In contrast, we are taking a more traditional and ethical approach: We do not charge any incarcerated person to use JSTOR or to acquire the technology needed to use it. Neither do we add fees to colleges or universities; if their students in traditional settings have access to JSTOR, so can their students in carceral settings. 

The early results of this mission-oriented work have been impressive. In the US, programs have noted increased educational participation and reduced behavioral problems. One woman, sentenced as a juvenile decades ago, has gained her freedom, is working toward a public health degree, and was a finalist for a 2024 Watson Fellowship. Many others have written to tell us how access to JSTOR helped them advance their education and achieve their goals. 

Ninety-five percent of people in prisons will eventually be released; access to knowledge and education while in prison increases their chances for a better life out of prison. By bringing academic resources to a setting that is renowned for limiting access to ideas, JSTOR Access in Prison is laying the foundation for new ideas to flourish, and hopefully each person will leave prison with an expanded understanding of the world around them. 

What are your plans for the future?

The successes of these students and this initiative demonstrate that access to academic research in carceral settings is necessary, valuable, and practical. Now, we intend to expand JSTOR Access in Prison to more correctional facilities and to provide more educational material tailored to their unique needs. We will continue monitoring the program and collecting evidence on long-term impacts with the help of academic partners. 

We are also working with departments of correction and philanthropic organizations to ensure that academic library resources remain available over the long term. Access to scholarly resources is a cornerstone of successful higher education programs, of course, but our goal is to enshrine access for any person who wants it, regardless of whether they are enrolled in any college or university program. Our mission is to expand access to knowledge and education, and we will continue advocating for access to these life-changing resources for any incarcerated person who wants to learn, grow, and explore the world of knowledge and ideas that is humanity’s common inheritance. 

Women attending Portland Community College while incarcerated at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Salem, Oregon. Photo Credit: Morgan Godvin.

Women attending Portland Community College while incarcerated at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Salem, Oregon, observed by journalist Charlotte West (right). Photo Credit: Morgan Godvin.

College class in women’s prison in Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Salem, Oregon. Notice the secure laptop computer, plastic three-ring binder, and prison ID on a lanyard. Photo Credit: Morgan Godvin.

About the author

Stacy Lyn Burnett, MBA, has led the effort to bring JSTOR Access in Prison to scale. She first discovered JSTOR as a student of Bard Prison Initiative in a New York state prison.

More information

https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/jstor-access-in-prison/

https://daily.jstor.org/the-impact-jstor-in-prison-has-made-on-me/

Sarah Price: Library Technology and Metadata - Measuring Impact

The afternoon session at To Measure or Not To Measure: Driving Usage seminar included a session from Sarah Price who is E-Resources and Serials Coordinator at the University of Birmingham and Co-Chair of KBART.

One of key things librarians are interested in is ensuring that the content they buy is easy to use, is discoverable and accessible for their students. She provided a candid and compelling story of how the University had got to grips with critical feedback from students on the eLibrary provision, and how they instigated a major review and development programme to address the issue.

Traditionally, there were two access points to content: traditional library catalogue (mainly for print collections) and the elibrary service. Both were accessed via the home page, but didn't take into account special collections and other services they had. The user interface was very text heavy, old fashioned and not very user friendly and you had to search separately for ejournals and ebooks, making the experience confusing, unattractive and a source of dissatisfaction.

As a results the University has invest in a Resource Discovery Service which provides:

• single search interface and search box (with a Google-like interface)
• harvesting of collections across institutions
• much faster search and results retrieval
• discovery at article and chapter level
• post search filtering and refinement.

The service is publicly available - with no (upfront) authentication - as a taster for potential students and academics. However, if you want to access in-depth content you have to sign-in with your university account. It is designed to have no dead ends and is integrated with other web services such as the University portal. They worked with Ex Libris to develop the product and included embedded searching as a function.

They added the Primo Central Index to this product which is a very important part of the discovery service delivering article level searching. A user can also narrow research from 'everything' to specific collections or using advanced search. You can log in with your own personal account which then provides access to the full set of content and lifts restrictions. When using a search term, the results will indicate what type of resource it is (e.g. articles, books, etc.) Where it is a book, it will show stock and location of copies on a site-specific basis, even including a map of the location in library. Print and electronic resources are listed alongside in a discovery tool. You can see where terms are where you searched to check relevance and you can also facet or post-filter (e.g. by article, book, library site, date range, author, language, electronic database, etc.), and it will attempt to group similar records.

Another interesting feature for scholarly publishers is the link to the in-house reading list management system on each textbook. This is flagged at the foot of the entry and you can click through to see full reading list and then continue through to other titles and services. Crucially, this will be helpful in checking against your records whether an academic has added a title to a reading list or not after receiving an inspection copy.

The resource is embedded on the university portal my.bham within a MyLibrary tab. This is a primary source of driving usage to the site. It's early days for analytics, but at the start of term they have the same amount of traffic from my.bham university portal as from Google Scholar. In addition, index based searching is generating a lot of traffic from their users.

During the implementation they decided to:

• still provide database level link to native interface function
• provide library catalogue only search but within FindIt@BHam
• 'everything' set as search default but enable a limit of scope
• linking SFX component of Metalib library catalogue to reading list management system and the University of Birmingham Research Archive (UBIRA).

They dispensed with the A-Z list and pre-search limiters and now rely on post filtering facets. They also dispensed with ebook MARC records as metadata input and now directly harvest from SFX. It was a bold decision, but they have found that it works for them. There has also been integration of the single search in the portal and library services homepage.

Price flagged the importance of metadata for discovery. It supports linking to the appropriate copy; allows an appropriate set of links to be presented in a single place; allows the library to accurately and comprehensively display an entire portfolio; accurately depicts the entitled coverage for that user; and allows users to find keywords in full text - not just abstracts.

As 'Resource Discovery Service' isn't the most exciting or engaging title, they ran a competition amongst staff for the new brand name. There were 80 suggestions, but the winner - FindIt@Bham - was felt to tie in with the overall university brand well. They thought long and hard about integrating the Birmingham brand and used pictures of the distinctive campus to customise the out of the box product. They have integrated with the University portal VLE and embedded in the library Facebook page. Other marketing and promotion included:

• social media
• lots of work with the Student Guild
• postcards/bookmarks
• university staff and student newsletters
• focus groups, training and briefing sessions
• integration and prominent website advertising
• university-wide plasma screens.

It's early days in terms of measuring impact, but they are assessing reviews of user feedback post-launch and have a continuous improvement strategy and post-launch authority group in place. They will analyse future quality measures, service and resource usage and benefits realisation. They are expecting to see a big hike in full text usage, are anticipating a massive impact to their ratings and anticipate seeing value added throughout the supply chain.

It has been interesting to compare to a Google Scholar set of results for certain specific searches. These only give generic results, not library entitlement. It has been interesting to note that the top result on a title is a pdf from JSTOR of a similar book to the one searched - their system is much more precise.

When addressing concerns about wider access to content, a demonstration showed that while Google will present the results, it won't present the full text unless they are free for access or the viewer can log in with an entitlement through the library system. The system doesn't embed authentication without library intervention - the link resolver.

Already, in comparison with Google Scholar searches, the Library discovery is context sensitive to the definition and results are more focused. Library discovery allows added value with resources grouped by subject and scholarly recommender services.

Her advice to publishers on how to integrate titles into the system includes:

• send your title level metdata to link resolvers (KBART)
• keep it up-to-date (cessations, title changes, etc)
• provide your deep linking algorithm
• allow discovery platforms to harvest your metadata
• don't be exclusive, be promiscuous!
• assess usage patterns following integration.

She concluded by saying that integration with library discovery tools is essential to drive usage. This needs to be based on industry good practice and there is a growing body of evidence supporting usage increase (and decrease) dependent on RDS integration.