Using JSTOR to Locate Sociology Articles

What is JSTOR? JSTOR stands for Journal Storage. It's an unglamorous, but descriptive, name for a database that allows for online access to the back issues of academic and scientific journals.
Accessibility: JSTOR is accessible only on the campus network, e.g. in your dorm, in any of the campus computer labs, in the library, or any campus building (like the Student Union) that has wireless environment.
Format: JSTOR files are in PDF format. If you want to save them, you will need acomputer with a zip drive, a CD burner, or you will need a thumb drive.
There are different ways to access JSTOR. One way to begin is at JSTOR's home page.

When you first get into JSTOR you are presented with a number of choices. Click on the Search icon.

Next, you are taken to a search menu. The first thing you want to do is scroll down and select the journals you want to search. In our case, the sociology journals.

Then, you want to create a search. Here's one for locating articles on masculinity and homosexuality. Note that the computer is searching for "homosexuality" in the full text of the article, but for "masculinity" only in the title. This is a way of focusing the search.

You could expand and refocus the search by reversing the process, i.e. asking for "homosexuality" to be in the title and "masculinity" to be in the full text. Note I placed an OR connector between the searches to do this. If you click on the image below, the search should run automatically.

Below is one of the results from the search. If you click on the image below, it will open this article. Note that the url for the article is located under Stable URL..

In a more traditional research situation, you might actually want to go the back of the article firs and look at the works cited page. This is something that faculty often do. Why? It's a quick way of gathering more articles. It stands to reason that works cited pages will have articles related to the topic to you are researching. And, as you may not have infinite library time, it's more efficient to gather as many relevant articles as possible while you are at the library.