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From=20your 1996-97 OCLC Users' Council Delegates:
   Lee Hadden               Bernard Strong         Marcia Talley
   [log in to unmask]         [log in to unmask]        [log in to unmask]
   ph: 703-648-6088         ph: 202-287-9463       ph: 410-293-6905


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Nita Dean +1-614-761-5002
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JSTOR AND OCLC AGREE TO COOPERATE IN PROVIDING ACCESS TO AND STORAGE OF
SCHOLARLY JOURNALS

DUBLIN, Ohio, Feb. 14, 1997--JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization that
provides electronic access to backfiles of periodicals, and OCLC have agree=
d
to cooperate in their independent efforts to help the scholarly community
take full advantage of the potential promised by electronic technologies in
disseminating academic research.

"The responsibility for archiving scholarly information in electronic
formats is a large and extremely important one for the academic community,"
said Kevin M. Guthrie, executive director, JSTOR.  "If today*s and
yesterday*s research material is to remain accessible in the future,
organizations like JSTOR and OCLC will have to work together.  We are
pleased to collaborate with OCLC on fail-safe backup protection of the JSTO=
R
database, and we look forward to working with OCLC and its Electronic
Collections Online publishing partners on other efforts that will benefit
libraries, publishers and scholars."

"Both OCLC and JSTOR agree that electronic journals offer many benefits for
libraries, and that maintaining reliable electronic archives is vital to
their success," said K. Wayne Smith, OCLC president and chief executive
officer.  "There is more than enough work for both organizations to do in
this important area.  By coordinating our efforts, we can avoid costly
duplication and reduce the time needed to reach our shared goal of helping
libraries do more with less."

As a first step in this collaboration, JSTOR and OCLC will work together to
implement a disaster recovery plan for the JSTOR database.  This database
presently contains over 1 million pages of important archival journal
literature and is scheduled to include the complete runs of a minimum of 10=
0
core scholarly journals by the end of 1999.  JSTOR and OCLC also plan to
consult with one another on publisher relations and other opportunities.

Future cooperative efforts between the two nonprofit organizations may
include:
=95 working in complementary ways to avoid duplication of effort in the
conversion and storage of periodicals

=95 creating technological linkages between electronic versions of current =
and
archival issues to allow seamless searches across entire journal runs

=95 communicating with one another on lessons learned in the area of copyri=
ght
rights acquisition and licensing in an effort to identify possible standard=
s
for the benefit and future use of the library, publisher and scholarly
communities

Originally conceived by William G. Bowen, president of The Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation, JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization focused on converting th=
e
backfiles of important scholarly journals from paper into electronic
formats.  By creating this fully searchable electronic database, JSTOR
offers scholars an entirely new level of access to yesterday*s research,
while simultaneously offering libraries the option of recovering
increasingly scarce shelf space in the long run.  JSTOR is based in New
York, New York [http://www.jstor.org/].

OCLC has focused on making current editions of journals available
electronically.  The OCLC FirstSearch Electronic Collections Online service=
,
to be launched in the second quarter of 1997 with over 300 titles, will
enable libraries to subscribe to large collections of academic journals,
from many publishers and disciplines.  The service is designed to provide
libraries with a cost-effective solution for accessing, archiving and
managing current editions of journals.

OCLC Online Computer Library Center is a nonprofit computer library service
and research organization whose computer network and services link more tha=
n
23,000 libraries in 63 countries and territories [http://www.oclc.org/].
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