Ten Years of Books at JSTOR: An Interview with ITHAKA’s John Lenahan
It’s no surprise that ebook usage has surged since the pandemic. While adapting to remote learning, many diehard print fans began to favor the accessibility and flexibility of e-content. However, this shift to digital resources in academia started far earlier than 2020. How have publishers encouraged this digital trend in the past decade? How does the move to e-resources coincide with the open access movement? What about monographs—a piece of the scholarly puzzle infamously slow to digitize and become open?
This month, ITHAKA celebrated the 10th anniversary of offering ebooks on JSTOR, a move that no doubt exposed researchers to the benefits of e-content. Since 2012, ITHAKA has worked to open its materials, developed a tiered model for smaller stakeholders to participate, and collaborated with librarians to enhance user experience. In this special episode, John Lenahan, ITHAKA Associate Vice President of Published Content, reflects on the launch and progress of the Books at JSTOR program. Through collaboration with library and publisher partners, Books at JSTOR worked to accommodate researcher needs by introducing DRM-free access for ebooks, creating chapter-level metadata, and increasing the discoverability of individual chapters. In addition to these topics, John also looks ahead, discussing the future of the program and how to maintain the sustainability of existing access models.
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