This document summarizes new research tools from JSTOR Labs including the JSTOR Understanding Series, Understanding Shakespeare project, and plans for future projects. The Understanding Series allows users to see all articles and chapters quoting a selected text passage. The Understanding Shakespeare project tested using a primary text as a portal for secondary scholarship. Future plans include adding more texts to the Understanding Series, incorporating copyrighted works, and expanding the Interview Archive project to make more documentary interviews accessible for education.

1. New Research Tools from
JSTOR Labs
Jessica Keup
jessica.keup@ithaka.org

2. JSTOR Labs works with partner publishers,
libraries and labs to create tools for
researchers, teachers and students that are
immediately useful – and a little bit magical.

3. THE JSTOR UNDERSTANDING SERIES
November 2018
www.jstor.org/understand
Pick a text and pick a passage. Instantly see all the articles
and chapters in JSTOR quoting that passage. With an ever-
expanding roster of primary texts, the JSTOR
Understanding Series is a powerful new way to research
cultural and historical texts.

4. UNDERSTANDING
SHAKESPEARE
• An early Labs project to test the
hypothesis/value of using a primary
text as a portal into secondary
scholarship
• A collaborative effort with the Folger
Shakespeare Library
• Launched in Fall 2014 and saw
steady usage until it was
decommissioned in 2019

5. MORE DISCOVERY AND PROTOTYPING
• Understanding the U.S. Constitution IOS/Android mobile app
• Poetry Annotations collaboration with Hypothes.is, the Poetry
Foundation, and UT Austin
• Experiments with other works, including Aeneid, Divine Comedy,
Walden, Middlemarch, King James Bible, etc.

8. These matches are identified
via fuzzy-text matching.
We’ve created a “Quotations
Database” of approx. 340
million quotations in JSTOR
articles and chapters.
These links stored as W3C-
compliant annotations.

9. WHAT’S NEXT FOR THE JSTOR
UNDERSTANDING SERIES?
• Intern just started – adding more texts
• We’ve heard concern about diversity of texts and canon reinforcement
• Proxy capabilities to get works in copyright
• Adding features (article length and reading level filters are highly
requested)

10. INTERVIEW ARCHIVE
June 2019
labs.jstor.org/interview
Documentarians are only often able to use only a small
percentage of the interviews they capture. In this
collaboration with Kunhardt Film Foundation, we will explore
making full video interviews with historically significant
figures made available for educational purposes.

11. BACKGROUND
Kunhardt Film Foundation’s
King in the Wilderness
documentary
• Partnered with us to make sure
the excess interview footage of
those who watched – and made -
civil rights history were
accessible and appreciated
• We saw a need to avoid video as ”informational cul-de-sac” and instead make video an
interconnected step in students’ research journeys

15. WHAT’S NEXT FOR THE INTERVIEW
ARCHIVE?
• Test the adoption in classroom settings
• Seek partnerships from other documentary makers or oral history
collectors
• Based on how those go, potentially add additional documentary
interviews or oral histories

16. Thank you
Jessica Keup
User Experience Prototyper, JSTOR Labs
ITHAKA
https://labs.jstor.org
@jaithica
jessica.keup@ithaka.org