Current Content in JSTOR Journal Archives: Identifying Full-Text Current Journals in JSTOR to Reduce Print Subscriptions

The University of Central Florida (UCF) main campus library seeks to move print content online whenever possible, to enhance access for our students and faculty and to free up space in the library. A project in this effort was an examination of all print journal subscriptions received at the main library. The goal was to see if any current print subscriptions were available online using acceptable authentication methods and at an acceptable cost or, even better, fully open access, freely available, or already available in an existing subscribed package. If access to current journal content exists, the print subscription is not renewed. In conducting the review of online journals, an unexpected source of current online journals was discovered in UCF’s JSTOR collections, a resource normally associated with journal archives rather than current serial content. This paper details how UCF used JSTOR content in the Alma integrated library system (ILS) and Microsoft Excel to quickly and easily determine which of the thousands of journals in UCF’s JSTOR packages have current content and then used this information to cancel print subscriptions.