Who Used JSTOR
Overall, 67% of the faculty did not use JSTOR,[2] 14% used JSTOR once a year, 11% used JSTOR once a month, and 8% used JSTOR once a week. None of the faculty used JSTOR daily. Table 11.2 summarizes JSTOR frequency of use by type of institution and discipline. A comparison of use by type of institution shows a higher proportion of JSTOR users at the five colleges (42%) than at the University of Michigan (27%). A further breakdown by discipline shows that the five college economists had the highest proportion of users (46%), followed by the Michigan economists (40%), the five-college historians (39%), and the Michigan historians (16%). One way to put JSTOR use into perspective is to compare this activity with similar, more familiar on-line activities, such as literature searching. Overall, 21% of the faculty did not do on-line searches, 25% searched once a year, 25% searched once a month, 25% searched once a week, and 4% searched daily. Table 11.3 summarizes data on the frequency of on-line searching by type of institution and discipline for the same faculty described in Table 11.2. A comparison of on-line searching by type of institution shows a higher proportion of on-line searchers at the five colleges (85%) than at the University of Michigan (76%). A further breakdown by discipline shows that the five-college economists had the highest proportion of searchers (89%), followed by the five-college historians (82%), and the Michigan economists and historians (both 76%).
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TABLE 11.1. Percentage of Faculty by Search Strategy, Type of Institution, and Discipline (n = 151a ) | | | University of Michigan | Five Colleges | Search Strategies | Economics (n = 44) | History (n = 54) | Economics (n = 25) | History (n = 28) | Use citations from related publications | 84% | 96% | 100% | 100% | Consult a colleague | 93% | 85% | 96% | 89% | Search electronic catalogs for a known item | 80% | 89% | 88% | 89% | Browse library shelves | 46%a | 83% | 72% | 86%b | Browse electronic catalogs | 57% | 56% | 80% | 79% | Use electronic indexes | 59% | 59% | 84% | 64% | Use printed indexes | 34% | 57% | 64% | 82% | Search card catalogs for a known item | 14%a | 32% | 17% | 39%b | Browse departmental collections | 48%a | 11% | 20% | 4%b | Browse card catalogs | 2% | 20% | 24% | 25% | Note: Means with different subscripts differ significantly at p < .01 in the Tukey honestly significant difference test. | a Nine cases were unusable due to incomplete data. |
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TABLE 11.2. Percentage of Faculty by Frequency of JSTOR Use, Type of Institution, and Discipline (n = 147a ) | | | University of Michigan | Five Colleges | Frequency of Use | Overall (n = 93) | Economics (n = 43) | History (n = 50) | Overall (n = 54) | Economics (n = 26) | History (n = 28) | neverb | 73% | 60% | 84% | 58% | 54% | 61% | once a year | 12% | 17% | 8% | 17% | 15% | 18% | once a month | 9% | 14% | 4% | 14% | 19% | 10% | once a week | 6% | 9% | 4% | 11% | 12% | 11% | daily | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | a Thirteen cases were unusable due to incomplete data. | b The "never" category also includes faculty who were unaware of JSTOR. |
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Figure 11.1 shows a plot of the cumulative percentage of faculty per institution who used JSTOR and who did on-line searches versus the frequency of these activities. For example, looking at the values plotted on the y-axis against the "Monthly" category shows that over three times as many Michigan faculty searched once a month or more (51%) compared with those who used JSTOR at least once a month (15%). Similarly, over two times as many of the five-college faculty searched once a month or more (62%) compared with those who used JSTOR at least once a month (25%). A further breakdown by discipline shows that
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TABLE 11.3. Percentage of Faculty by Frequency of On-Line Searching, Type of Institution, and Discipline (n = 147a ) | | | University of Michigan | Five Colleges | Frequency of Searches | Overall (n = 93) | Economics (n = 43) | History (n = 50) | Overall (n = 54) | Economics (n = 26) | History (n = 28) | never | 24% | 24% | 24% | 15% | 11% | 18% | once a year | 25% | 28% | 22% | 24% | 16% | 32% | once a month | 25% | 22% | 28% | 26% | 34% | 18% | once a week | 23% | 19% | 26% | 30% | 35% | 25% | daily | 3% | 7% | 0% | 6% | 4% | 7% | a Thirteen cases were unusable due to incomplete data. |
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over twice as many of the five-college economists searched once a month or more (73%) than used JSTOR at least once a month (31%), that over six times as many of the Michigan historians searched once a month or more (54%) than used JSTOR at least once a month (8%), that over twice as many of the five-college historians searched once a month or more (50%) than used JSTOR at least once a month (21%), and that over twice as many of the Michigan economists searched once a month or more (48%) than used JSTOR at least once a month (23%).
