[Update 1: see the response from Brian Larsen, User Services Manager, JSTOR, in the comment below. I commend them for reading, responding, and for trying to make JSTOR easier to use.]
[Update 2: IT WORKS! Brian has done it (for Carleton anyway, and I think he's working on the rest). And I don't even have to dowload a pdf!]
OK, I know I'm really bad at doing this sort of thing, but all the same. It has just taken me about 15 minutes, plus a lot of sweat, to get access to an article via JSTOR. It's "free" for me, because Carleton University pays for a subscription; but it's certainly not "free" in terms of my time and sweat. I find the whole thing incredibly frustrating. It's not just the time and sweat; I don't like being reminded I'm an idiot at this sort of thing. It makes me angry.
And it makes me wonder what it all means, for the future, for many of us, and not just for JSTOR.
Normally, when I'm reading a blog post, and there's a link to something else, I just click on the link, and up it comes (preferably in a new tab). That's lovely. It makes me much more likely to read, or at least skim, that something else, because it's just so quick and easy and idiot-proof.
But not with JSTOR.
So, I'm reading Mark Thoma's daily links, as I normally do in the morning. David Glasner's post on W.H. Hutt, Say's Law, and the Keynesian multiplier looks interesting, so I click on it, and start reading. (See how totally easy everything is so far; just one click and I'm reading!) Halfway down David's post I come to a link to one of David's papers that looks really interesting. And that's when the trouble starts. I click on it. Damn! It's a JSTOR!
I read the first page, which is free, and, much more importantly, free and easy. But I know I really should read more. And I want to read more. But I really hate the stress of figuring out how to read more. It's like trying to concentrate to do something difficult, when all the time someone's looking over your shoulder laughing at you and calling you an idiot. But I'm determined. So I gather up my courage and forge ahead.
Last time I accessed an article on JSTOR this is what I did (though I certainly don't remember all the many steps): I wrote down the journal, volume, month, page, etc. on a scrap of paper. I then went to the Carleton homepage, tried to remember if I needed to access the library via MyCarleton and Carleton Central because it needed to know it was me trying to get into JSTOR and not some random person coming in off the web. So I logged into MyCarleton and after an abortive attempt to find the library that way, went back to the homepage, found the link to the library, looked around for what to click on next, decided to click on "Journals", then put the journal title in the search box….went down a couple of dead-end paths, and finally figured out how to do it by trial and error. The totally amazing thing is (apart from the fact that I didn't give up and actually succeeded in downloading the article) is that my home computer actually knew what my login and password was!! I have no idea how it did that. It must know I'm an idiot, and it must have rolled its eyes and decided to remember my login and password from last time I used JSTOR. My login is a great long number I can find on my Carleton ID card. I have no idea what my password is, but my computer does.
This time I got smart, or just lucky, or maybe something has changed. Looking at the JSTOR page I noticed a little box on the top right, which asked me "Think you might have access to this content via your library?" Well, yes, I did think that. So I clicked on the little box. Nothing happened. Then I looked more closely at the little box, and noticed it said "login" underneath in small print. So I tried again, by clicking on "login". That worked.
I now had a confusing page that asked me to log in to JSTOR on the left, or log in via an institution on the right. I thought about it a bit, then noticed on the right it said "Are you in Canada?" That was a question I could answer. "Yes!" I thought, "I am in Canada!" (I don't know what I would have answered if I had been on holiday in England.) Plus, it listed some Canadian universities underneath. "Great!". Carleton wasn't listed, but it did say "show more", so I clicked there.
A whole list of countries came up (Didn't I already say I was in Canada?) but Canada was in blue, so OK. Then a list of provinces. I scrolled down to Ontario. (I'm in Quebec, but Carleton is in Ontario, so I figured it probably meant where Carleton was rather than where I was). I clicked on Ontario. Ontario turned blue, but nothing else happened. I double-clicked on Ontario. Still nothing. Hmmm.
Then I noticed a search box. So I typed in "Carleton", clicked on "Carleton University", clicked on "search", noticed a tiny "login" to the right of Carleton, so clicked on it, was amazed to discover my computer still knew my login and password, and knew I needed them right now, so I WAS IN!
Only, no I wasn't. This is the bit that really bugs me. JSTOR was asking me what I was searching for, and asking me whether I wanted to search by discipline: African American Studies? African Studies? American Indian Studies?…..No Dammit! I want that article by David Glasner! You know, the one I was reading the first page of about 20 clicks ago! That's how I got here in the first place! Surely you haven't forgotten what I was just reading? Because I have. What the hell was that journal anyway? And what volume, and month, or whatever? I can't remember. It's computers that are supposed to remember stuff like that!
I forgot to write down the journal, year, and month, on a scrap of paper. What do I do now? I daren't go back, because I will never find my way here again. Maybe I should open a new tab, go back to Mark Thoma's blog, and retrace my steps from there?
Then I got smart. (OK, smart for me). I opened a new tab, clicked on history, and found the first JSTOR page I had come to, with all the details about David's article. Eventually, eventually, after typing in "Southern Economic Journal", finding it, clicking on the right decade, then the right year, then the right month, than the right article, (I was getting good by now), I managed to download a pdf. Success at last!
Success? Well I don't really call that success. I call it a PITA.
It should have been ONE CLICK. Maybe two clicks, if you include the login. Remember, my computer knows my login and password, even if I don't. And JSTOR already knew what article I wanted, because it was the one I was just reading the first page of on the JSTOR site!
There's a more general point here, that all you clever young people reading this need to understand. And it's not just about de facto open access to research, even when we've paid the fee (or someone's paid it for us).
You all have your smartphones and Ipads and kindles and GPS thingies in your (automatic tranny) cars, and you are all very comfortable using them (though I bet you can't change a spark plug). You are all comfortably "connected". Not just to the internet, but to society and all its institutions. But there's a lot of people like me in the population. And a lot of them are a lot poorer, and (in other ways) less functional, and generally, a lot less lucky and successful in life than I am. They don't have my resources.
What's going to happen to people like me, only poorer, older, sicker, without family or friends to help? And even less capable than I am? Will we still be part of the same society?
Will we all be begging for spare change, simply because we can't figure out how to get pensions and stuff the proper way, by just "It's easy, if you just follow these simple techno-geek steps"?
No. We won't be begging for spare change. Because spare change will all be E-money, so we won't even be able to do that!
OK. Time to try to read David's article.
[Update: i expect I really shouldn't whine. After all, if I had to drive into Carleton, park, walk to the library, hunt through the card file, write down the location of the journal on a scrap of paper, walk up a couple of flights of stairs, find the right stacks, find the right volume, figure out if I can photocopy the article legally, find the right change for the photocopier, find a free photocopier, photocopy the article, go back to my car, drive home, just like I would have had to in the olden days, it would have taken me a lot longer and a lot more sweat, especially through traffic and on a hot day like this.]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
I was getting ready to re-read Glasner’s post and am glad I stopped here first. For the love of God let’s look at Says law and human services again through a new context. Now if I can get my old brain to figure out the point Glasner wanted to make about Say’s law this morning.
Nick – was that new tabs thing directed at me? You’ve mentioned this to me before, but I don’t like the new tabs, because I’m addicted to the back and forward arrows, and when something opens in a new tab then the navigate backwards arrow won’t work. Also I’m really bad about closing windows, and new tabs make the windows proliferate.
How do other people feel about this?
With JStor links, I’m guessing you always try just typing the article’s name into google scholar and seeing if you can come up with an ungated copy? I can see that there isn’t an ungated version of Glaser’s paper.
There’s a always a trade-off between security and other things. In the past we relied on people for security. For people with stable lives, that worked fine – if the people at the local bank branch knew you, you could always get your money without problems. For people with less stable lives, it was harder – in a world based on who you know (and who knows you), what’s a person without connections to do?
Now we rely on technology for security, and there is definitely a trade-off between security and ease of use. Like you, my fear is being old and unable to remember any of my passwords and pin numbers. Do I just write them down on a piece of paper and carry them around with me? Give them to someone else – who can then use them to clear out my bank account?
The thing is, people who design a system like JStor or the Carleton library system say to themselves “this system isn’t so difficult, anyone can figure out how to use it in ten minutes.” They spend all of their time on the system, and so for them it’s natural and intuitive. But the problem is that for the rest of us we’re all dealing with dozens of different systems. The financial accounting system. The grade administration system. The library system. Typepad. Editorial management software. More editorial management software. SSHRC I usually find myself logging onto a system and realizing I could get this to work if I could only just remember what my username is (fwoolley? woolleyf? my old Carleton email address that hasn’t worked in 5 years? my old employee number? my Banner ID?)
About not being able to figure out how to get pensions – this is happening now. There are people in this country who don’t get Old Age Security and other benefits that are entitled to receive just because they don’t fill out the forms at all, or don’t fill them out correctly – though in the past five or 10 years there’s been an active campaign to increase old age security take-up, and it has worked to some extent.
Becky: Yep, Say’s Law is what we should be sweating trying to figure out, not JSTOR.
[I know this is not the point of your post at all, but your university library system blows. You ought to get logged-in automatically so that you just go to the article, click view pdf., and that’s it. I don’t recall ever having had to log in to JSTOR myself, I think being inside the university network is sufficient to automate it. Which is just as well, else I’d have been equally annoyed]
It’s not just you. I’m currently starting on my undergrad thesis and I hate looking up articles in JSTOR. I’m the “computer guy” in my family and circle of friends and even I can’t figure out an easy way to access articles off JSTOR and this is after daily use for the past month, plus some occasional use for the past three years.
I remember using JSTOR nearly 10 years ago and it being the same. It’s amazing how many institutions will not spend the time and money to hire a good web designer to design a user friendly website out of indifference and a fear of “confusing” current users even when it’s their current set up that is confusing.
Frances: “Nick – was that new tabs thing directed at me?”
Nope. I was thinking “Should I just phone Frances for help?” Like when i wanted to renew my UK passport, and discovered it’s all done through Washington DC and you can’t just go to the High Commission on Sparks Street any more and say “Help!”
Totally agree with your comment. I have to use a spreadsheet once a year, to do grades. I always forget how, and have to re-learn it.
Nick,
don’t you have a VPN-connection? Just ask someone from the IT-department to drop by and install a VPN-connection to your PC and all you need to do is to type in your credentials and you can use the sources freely available to you through your university. A VPN-connection is on the same level of difficulty of logging into your blog or starting up your PC. No need to beg for spare change we’ll drag you into the 21st century if only to read what your opinion is on 19th century monetary theory ;).
ps. sometimes you need to c&p the title into google and then find it on JSTOR through Google. Same as when you want to get through the WSJ paywall.
Luis: accessing JSTOR articles is easy if I am in my office, already part of the university system, but can be a pain when I try from home.
Nick: I have (finally) figured it out, I think: from my home computer, access the unniversity library, type in the article title, log in when the library asks me to …and I am there. (More often than not this works.)
Nick,
Just had a quick look on your university website through google: http://www6.carleton.ca/ccs/all-services/wireless-and-internet/vpn/ . Hope it helps!
Nick –
Here’s a question for you: do you think your frustration with these systems is connected to your ability to see through framing – that is, you always just ignore all of the unimportant trivial details, and cut straight to the heart of any issue, which is why you’re such a brilliant economist. Except when it comes to logging onto computer systems, trivial details matter.
Here’s a parallel example. I have a friend who has an amazing spatial sense. She can rotate any shape in her head with ease (awesome tetris player). Now when it comes to inserting credit cards into machines, she is absolutely hopeless. She sees the credit card icon, the one that shows the card, say, stripe down, chip in first, but then mentally rotates it so many times that she can’t get the card in the slot.
Advice for what it’s worth: don’t ever delete the cookies on your machine. They’re the things that remember passwords for you and make it easier to log on. I know you’ll follow this advice, because you probably couldn’t figure out how to delete the cookies anyways, but don’t let anyone else delete them either.
I second Martin’s suggestion: look into getting a VPN connection. It’s what I use, and it’s simple: open up dialogue box, type in password and the internet thinks I’m logged in at my office.
eta: It’s especially handy when you run into those paywalls. Open up the VPN, refresh the screen and you get the same page but with the appropriate download privileges. Don’t even have to open up a new browser window.
University of Michigan has a partial workaround, that might be adaptable for you.
Complex Personal Version
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~singerdj/bookmarklet.html
University Version
http://www.lib.umich.edu/mlibrary-labs/proxy-server-bookmarklet
(Someone who knows how the JSTOR proxy for Carleton works would have to modify these to make them Carleton-specific.)
A bookmarklet is a small piece of javascript that runs when you click the bookmark. The personal version takes the current page address, and changes the ‘site’ portion to be the proxy version of the same site.
I tried your JSTOR link and ran into the same problem getting access via Toronto Public Library (which has a JSTOR subscription). However, I was able to adapt the “personal umich” version to TPL. Now, I click on the JSTOR link — it gives me only the first page. Then I click on the TPLproxy bookmarklet, and I am asked for my TPL login. I fill that in, and immediately I am at the full-access JSTOR page for the item in question.
If I am already logged in on TPL, then the bookmarklet immediately takes me to the full access page.
Given that you might need to provide additional credentials, I don’t think it can be made much simpler. But this does appear to get you to your destination much more cleanly.
The catch, of course, is that creating bookmarklets is a technical web design skill set — not something you likely have.
Okaaay …
Carleton ALREADY HAS a proxifying bookmarklet.
Go here.
http://apps.carleton.edu/campus/library/for_faculty/working/libe_moodle/proxify/
What’s going to happen to people like me, only poorer, older, sicker, without family or friends to help? And even less capable than I am? Will we still be part of the same society?
Will we all be begging for spare change, simply because we can’t figure out how to get pensions and stuff the proper way, by just “It’s easy, if you just follow these simple techno-geek steps”?
I resent that. While I have never (I think) used JSTOR, I am a geek (and a computer one at that!), and this is definitely not the kind of thing techno-geekiness stands for. The problem, of course, is that JSTOR blows. And it blows because the number one use case is already taken care of (as noted by other comments in this post): most universities automatically login when you are already within-campus. This should hopefully improve, because (rather recently) google and facebook taught the rest of the world how remote authentication can work easily.
But in any case, my broader point is this: it is not about a growing divide between the computer-literate and the computer-illiterate (this can be a real problem, but not what you are ranting about), it is about broken systems. And why are there so many broken systems? First, because we are slowly learning to create good systems. But I think the most important reason is more economic-oriented: the user is not the one that pays, and neither of those is the one whose information is being protected. And one way to fix this is to complain loudly to your university, because they pay, and they can hopefully influence JSTOR to un-break the system.
As a taxpayer, I pay for most of the ‘public good’ university research which is denied to me behind a pay wall.
Any economists studying the ‘economics’ of the guild structure of academia and the rent seeking which drives the whole thing.
You are outrages. I payed for all of this God damned research,
Nick, in the unlikely event that you want to try installing VPN software: http://www6.carleton.ca/ccs/all-services/wireless-and-internet/vpn/
The old gits hoard good information behind a paywall… and they complain that the young folk haven’t made easy for them to access. I’m sure there’s a lesson in there, I just can’t work it out.
Make that:
“You are outraged? I pay for all of the wonderful research that I’m not allowed to see.”
I recently read metzler’s book on Keynes which included some discussion of says law. Is say’s law simply supposed to be a proof of how markets equilibrate? I am having a hard time figuring out why say’s law is so important. If supply creates its own demand in the aggregate then it just seems like Say’s law just assumes its conclusion. Nick I would love for you to do a post on Say’s law.
As for JSTOR, I always just found it easiest to search for the journal the article was in and then manually find the article by date and issue.
Greg – you’ll find that most economists make ungated versions of their research available – the usual practice is to post a semi-final version of the paper on a website. The reason that Nick ran into problems with this particular article is that, because it’s s older, there isn’t an ungated version on-line.
If you’re looking for really serious barriers to access, take medical research. It’s much, much harder to get hold of ungated versions of articles.
Britmouse: “The old gits hoard good information behind a paywall… and they complain that the young folk haven’t made easy for them to access.”
If Nick is guilty of anything here, it’s having a wildly over-optimistic view of the average young person’s ability to work out how the library functions. I’ve found that a substantial percentage of my students really struggle to access journal articles or data sets off-campus.
Ian: “Nick I would love for you to do a post on Say’s law.”
I have done several posts on Say’s Law, and the very closely-related Walras’ Law.
I think this is my best on Walras’ Law. Maybe this was my best on Say’s Law.
There’s more in the search box top right, if you type in “Say’s Law” or Walras’ Law”.
Tried to replicate your problem from my desktop here at HEC Montréal.
1 click took me from your post to David’s post.
1 more click took me to the first JSTOR page for his article.
1 more click downloaded the full PDF.
So it looks like some universities have done more system integration than others. But I’m fuzzy on whether its more (“economically”) efficient to leave that integration up to the individual university or to the database provider (in this case, JSTOR.)
Simon – on campus v. off campus. On campus access is no problem.
Write? On little pieces of paper!!
How 20th century. Such a wonderful antique quality.
Other people have multi-clip softwares installed on their computers, along with TXT files with the IDs or their reemembered encoding mnemonics (for IDs and for those passwords that you have memorized, usually in the low prime numbers region) in the ID-Pswd.txt file and call them up with Notetab and cut-and-paste.
Multi-clipboards keep all your copy clips (even ones you want 6ot forget up to a fixed number or size limit. And you can recall previous clips and paste, edit etc.
A good wird processor or editor program often has these qualities.
M8 free clip board is simple. There are many others.
Lists at:
http://www.tucows.com/software.html?t2=831
http://download.cnet.com/windows/clipboard-software/?tag=contentBody;sideBar
[Warning the latter, Cnet is a two step download process (just like JStor?) ]
Chris S: “Okaaay …
Carleton ALREADY HAS a proxifying bookmarklet.
Go here.
http://apps.carleton.edu/campus/library/for_faculty/working/libe_moodle/proxify/ ”
So, I gathered up the courage to go to that link Chris S helpfully provided. Read what it said on that page 3 times, and didn’t understand it. But I managed to drag the bookmarklet things to my bookmarks, sweating blood (I felt proud of myself, because I never knew you could drag a link to the bookmarks). And I was about to give it a try (trying just anything, because I still didn’t understand how to use that bookmark thingy). Then I noticed: something didn’t look quite familiar about that page???? We don’t have a Gould Library, and the colours look wrong???
Wrong Carleton, Chris!! That’s Carleton College, in the US!
But thanks very much for trying to help.
Gonna take a rest, then try one of the other suggestions.
Thanks all for the comments.
Bill Lee: “Other people have multi-clip softwares installed on their computers, along with TXT files with the IDs or their reemembered encoding mnemonics (for IDs and for those passwords that you have memorized, usually in the low prime numbers region) in the ID-Pswd.txt file and call them up with Notetab and cut-and-paste.”
Please say you are just teasing!?
@Nick Rowe. Of course we are teasing. But there are tools that help.
Try to get the computer set up for the blind and ask about such help software.
It makes computer manipulation so much easier. You hands will never leave the keyboard.
My ID file (VPS.Txt) is only a single letter away from the desktop (only icon starting with “V” >Desktop >v [Enter}. I’m not going remember 9 digit numbers. Passwords are hinted at, those passwords my flesh and blood brain can pick up without revealing to all. Long Carleton IDs are anathema to me.
Do you use words for passwords? Why not some of the first 1000 prime numbers that feel comfortable? When you read “All mimsy were the borogroves…” did it not fit your mind quickly. Some numbers have comfortable fits.
I thought that every economist started their day with opening up several preparatory windows on their computers such as Econolit, RepEc.org, Scholar.google.ca etc. and then checking email, StatCan Daily etc. in a web browser.
I see in Econolit that Glasner (more unique than title) and a simple A in field-note jumps to Author field
(What mouse? Oh this X-Y pointing device?
I only use keyboard shortcuts and CUA key combinations.
Few things are more than a Letter-Toggle away.
Mouses are so unproductive.)
that Glasner rewrote the 1985 Southern Economic Journal 52(1) pp.46-67 paper in an Edward Elgar published book “Pioneers in Economics” volume 20, 1991.
(I note [“Danger, Will Robinson!”] that Glasner is/was a member of the Manhattan Institute when he wrote it.)
And the Econolit reference I see gives a link to a full text PDF. And that opens the Ebsco provided link to the S.Ec.J. directly. Econolit came via the Ebsco mass subscription here. Carleton goes through the Proquest system.
[ While most libraries have tried to use http://www.lib.carleton.ca, Carleton insists on the full library.carleton.ca. Why oh why didn’t they register lib.carleton too and cross reference? And the “wonderful IT people” registered it as http://WWW.library... so the WWW is much too important to the DNS domain name server. ]
Sigh.
About EconoLit for the general public: http://www.aeaweb.org/econlit/doctypes.php
Nothing for Glasner in RepEc.org
Hmm, only a 1989 paper by Nick Rowe. Ah!, more formally, 22 under Nicholas Rowe.
3640 “results” for Glasner David in scholar.google.ca
Second one (as ranked by Google) is the S.Ec.J. article “cited by 40; related articles; Where can I get this?” and a link on the right hand side for the Jstor.org article. Same one page view and multi-path rigamarole from there.
Everyone complains about JStor, many use it exclusively because of their holdings and full text modes.
D’oh!
However … a quick Google search turns up the Carleton University (carleton.CA!!) proxy address, even using JSTOR as an example.
If you know what you are doing — in this case, at least, I do — you can modify the Javascript to work for Carleton.
However, some notes from Carleton indicate this might not work as intended. (Notes at http://www.library.carleton.ca/help/linking-library-resources-webct )
Try this link (from those notes above) …
http://www.jstor.org.proxy.library.carleton.ca/stable/20454994
If this takes you to the Third World Quarterly then it definitely works. It might ask you to login using your Barcode Number and PIN. That also means it might work.
Basically, the bookmarklet just transforms …
http://www.jstor.org/stable/20454994
into
http://www.jstor.org.proxy.library.carleton.ca/stable/20454994
… and the Carleton proxy does the rest of handling the login. In fact, the bookmarklet tries to work for any URL that is not already proxified, so it might work for more resources than just JSTOR.
Chris S: Wow! http://www.jstor.org.proxy.library.carleton.ca/stable/20454994 took me straight to my login, one click, then Third World Quarterly!
I read that Carleton page, and didn’t understand it at all. I can’t see a “bookmarklet” on that page.
Will try again tomorrow morning.
Frances — yes.
The bottom line is that academics have taxpayer supplied access to paywalled online research & academics don’t feel the consequences of their guild / rent seeking behavior, re blocking/paywalling taxpayers from access to the research taxpayers have payed for.
And because they don’t feel it themselves, they could care less about the existence of this phenomena.
Academics are selective in what they see, feel and care about when it comes to government created privilege & monopolies — which tell us something very important about academics & the interests which academics pursue via their ‘research’ & classroom advocacy.
Nick I hear you this sort of thing is a pain in the neck. At least it’s available to you through your school. When I see an article I like it’s even worse when it turns out to be a JSTOR
Strangely, I agree with Greg Ransom. Perhaps I should check the window for nearby levitating examples of the species Sus Porcus….
In the old days, how long would it have taken you to go to your library, find the journal, and either pull it off the shelf and copy it, or sit down and scan the article? — and then go back to your office?
Of course in the old days that means you would in general not attempt to trace the odd reference.
You may have an RA to whom you would have delegated the (literal) footwork in the old days. OK, but you still would have had to wait for them to show up, given them the task, and then … waited. [I’m at a strictly undergrad institution, and don’t have my own RA. We do have a “work-study” assigned to the department on an irregular basis [both their assigned work hours, and their likelihood to actually show up]. I generally find it quicker to do things myself.
Sum: our workflow has changed a lot. There is a downside: I look up too many references, I scan too many of the articles that cross my (virtual) desktop via subscriptions to EconPapers subject lists of new working papers and the tables of content services of journals.
I do however remember the old days, and am currently facing the consequences through a move to a (smaller) corner office. In the old days I would go to the library once in a while and spend an afternoon scanning journals. Along the way I accumulated xeroxes, mountains of them. I’m now “deaccessioning” them, books too. In the process I’m finding things I’d forgotten I had, and increasing the likelihood that I can find what I do have in a timely manner. (Lots of duplications among my xeroxes, after a point it was quicker to make a new copy than track down an existing one.)
You can become more efficient at JStor, and EconPapers, and EconLit, and using you library’s tools to jump from a database to a journal to the actual article (or in my case, for Japanese language sources, to interlibrary loan). If you have a hard time restraining your curiosity, as I and many other academics do (we academics are self-selected to have that temptation) you may however be worse off for all of that!
I too agree (approximately) with Greg Ransom. (What he says is a slight exaggeration.) This shouldn’t be surprising really. I don’t think academics are any different in this regard from other people.
Nick: There’s no bookmarklets on that tutorial Chris S linked to. He’s assuming you’d make a bookmarklet to automate the sort of ‘proxifications’ of addresses he demonstrated on. If you’d like to mess with Javascript, its a great exercise. Or if you want to link into WebCT (which is what http://www.library.carleton.ca/help/linking-library-resources-webct is actually about ).
However, if you simply want to download the PDF yourself in the least obtrusive way possible, I suggest the VPN tutorial Martin has linked to. I’m using Carleton’s VPN, and its worked for me fine.
This may be an institution specific thing. Before I retired, and from my work computer, all I had to do was (a) click on a JSTOR link or (b) go to JSTOR and search on the article title. Done. Now that I am retured (but still with some faculty priveleges), we’ll see.
” I don’t think academics are any different in this regard from other people.”
When I speak about epistemology and the sociology of knowledge, Academics routinely deny to me that they human, or tell me that the only acceptable premise in polite conversation is to pretend that they are not human.
Greg: yes, but it may depend on the conversation. All conversations have some premises that you accept as a basis for making that conversation possible, and that define what sort of conversation it is.
“Only, no I wasn’t. This is the bit that really bugs me. JSTOR was asking me what I was searching for, and asking me whether I wanted to search by discipline: African American Studies? African Studies? American Indian Studies?…..No Dammit! I want that article by David Glasner! You know, the one I was reading the first page of about 20 clicks ago! That’s how I got here in the first place! Surely you haven’t forgotten what I was just reading? Because I have. What the hell was that journal anyway? And what volume, and month, or whatever? I can’t remember. It’s computers that are supposed to remember stuff like that!”
This is a daily occurence for me, so I am gratified to find out that I was not alone in my idiocy. The smart thing of course is to open multiple windows and cut and paste until you can download. But I’m like a mouse who follows the scent of cheese through a maze forgetting to map my path as I go. Next time I’ll remember (or not).
Hi Nick. Just wanting to let you know that we saw your post and that we do care about this particular issue and the myriad of complexities that challenge the online researcher.
In response to this frustrating user experience, we launched our Institution Finder functionality, our name for the institution look-up tool you discuss. We are glad for your feedback there about making the search box more prominent, maintaining your country selection and making the province selection a dynamic exchange. We are always looking for ways we can improve the presentation and performance of this functionality.
Also, without getting too technical, and similar to Bill Lee’s comments below, the complexity here lies with rewriting proxies that can alter and/or lose valuable information in the URL that attempts to bring you back to the article you were trying to access in the first place.
In response to reports just like yours, we hard coded redirect capabilities into JSTOR for use with the major proxy products and Single Sign On mechanisms, including OCLC’s EZproxy, the one in place at Carleton. We are systematically reviewing and implementing this for all of our participating institutions with these proxies, but hadn’t reach Carleton yet. After reading your post, however, we made some simple changes to Carleton’s registry in JSTOR, and your experience should be different the next time around.
Find the article on JSTOR, click login in the upper right, find Carleton University, click the Login link next to Carleton University and this time you will be directed to the Carleton login page, then redirected back to the article, not the search page.
I hope this functionality improves your experience with JSTOR and I’ll be happy to assist further if I can. I truly appreciate your candid feedback.
Best,
Brian Larsen
User Services Manager, JSTOR
support@jstor.org
Hi Brian! Thanks very much for responding to this!
I really hate to say this, but I still can’t get it to work. I’ve tried twice, following your instructions. Everything goes fine, until i get to this bit: “…then redirected back to the article, not the search page.”
Instead, I now find myself on Carleton’s “Library Proxy eResource Entries” page, not back at the article I started with.
It might be a glitch, or it might be I’m screwing it up.
(BTW, despite all my whining, having something like JSTOR available from my home computer, even with my problems, is still massively better than me physically going to the library.)
Whenever you are having problems accessing an article – no matter why you appear to be having problems – talk with your librarian! The librarians at the Reference Desk are literally waiting to help you with things like this, and they enjoy helping. They can explain all sorts of ways to more efficiently search for the articles you want.
Oh, JSTOR. I appreciate Brian’s attempt to make it better, but JSTOR is one of the the worst online services I have ever had to deal with. When reading academic books, I keep source so many quotations that interest me, but as soon as I see it’s only available through JSTOR, I immediately lose interest.
And I’m a techno-geek. I can program in 4 different languages, I make my own video games, I contributed to the linux kernel, and feel more at home with a command prompt than with a GUI. And JSTOR? Too much hassle for me.
Thanks Nick,
I’ll take a look. Could be something isn’t configured or refreshing correctly. More in a bit.
Brian
Hi Nick,
Sorry for the delay, I wanted to test it a couple of ways, but it should be working as expected now. I’ll reach out to our library contact there as well in case we need to triage further.
Best,
Brian
Brian: IT WORKS! And I don’t even have to download a pdf! It comes out as something else, not a pdf, I don’t know what it is, but it works just as easily as a pdf, without the download. Thanks so much!
Yep. I’ve just done it again, from scratch. This is SO much easier (and quicker). Thanks Brian!
Nick – you have analyzed an issue that is LONG overdue for the public spotlight – and in so doing you have provided a very important public good.
It is NOT just older or poorer or less IT sophisticated people that give up journal search due to the incredibly frustrating deliberate BARRIERS placed in front of finding and downloading a journal article. My very IT literate 4th year BCom and MBA students of the one click, iPhone generation give up after – at most – two clicks. They simply lack the patience or possibly have developed a deep intuition that publishers that place barriers at the front end will build in barriers all the way down.
The user interface problem is NOT just a JSTOR problem – but of scholarly journals on line more generally.
The interface is so bad that I purchased my own annual on-line subscriptions directly from FT, WSJ, NYT to avoid the nightmare of going through first the library wall and then the factiva wall in order to save significant amounts of time – each and every time i.e. multiple times a day, using the smooth – very very fast – interface of FT or WSJ or NYT. As you noted, our time is valuable.
And when I get stuck finding journal articles, Carleton Library has excellent support staff who can find it. An efficient Rube Goldberg solution to a Rube Goldberg problem.
Now if only Google could acquire them or retrain the Soviet trained journal publishers on search and download interface, it would be a better world for all (the journal search process reminds me of going to a Polish state liquor state cerca 1991 or a Romanian hotel in 1993 – its Kafka).
Ian: “it is NOT just older or poorer”
I agree with you. Members of the pre-internet generation have an advantage over young’uns in that we have a conception of what a hard copy journal looks like. That it comes in volumes of several issues. That it’s about so long. That it’s kept on a shelf in the library. That a library is this place where there are people called librarians who can help you.
A lot of software pre-supposes that conception of a hard copy journal – i.e. one has to click by volume and then by issue or use some crummy unintuitive search interface. That’s so illogical to an internet-only person.
Brian and Nick – this is an awesome demonstration of the power of blogging.