Relational Map coming soon. Learn more about the work we’re doing with AI and view our example prototypes here.
The JSTOR digital library enables incarcerated people to access scholarly materials and texts online in more than 1,000 U.S. prisons across all 50 U.S. states. Learners use JSTOR resources for higher education, pursuit of GEDs or Adult Basic Education, or for personal interests in improving their literacy and educational attainment.
In 2022, the nonprofit organization Ithaka (JSTOR's parent organization) implemented the first direct-access online version of JSTOR for incarcerated learners, providing access to journal articles, open-access content, and primary sources and data sets for research purposes. The online version (available on terminals and tablets) includes all the content available to college students outside of prison excluding social media functions and external hyperlinks in order to be deemed secure for correctional use. In some facilities, there are additional restrictions such as approval permissions held by administrators to allow or deny certain content such as maps of local areas that could pose security risks.
In 2024, JSTOR launched a 3-year project with the support of the Mellon Foundation to scale access to JSTOR to all higher education-in-prison (HEP) programs in the U.S. The project provides both offline and direct access solutions in line with programmatic and security requirements with the goal of making the learner experience as close as possible to that of their peers outside the justice system.
Key activities of the new project:
JSTOR's digital collections are used in more than 13,000 schools, universities, and institutions around the world. JSTOR includes:
JSTOR is part of ITHAKA, a nonprofit organization that helps the academic community use digital technologies to preserve the scholarly record and to advance research and teaching in sustainable ways. ITHAKA also includes Artstor,Ithaka S+R, and Portico.
This project is part of ITHAKA’s Improving Higher Education in Prisons initiative, a series of work to support justice-impacted individuals, empowering them to improve their lives by increasing access to high quality educational resources.
JSTOR has provided offline access to its collections for students in higher education in prisons since 2007. Since 2019, JSTOR offered two pilot programs:
Providing a freely available library of quality educational content from the nonprofit organization ITHAKA was posited to provide an option to the growing number for-profit education and technology solutions in prison —with the goals of lowering the cost and improving the outcomes and experience of education in prisons.
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