LISTSERV 16.5 - ARLIS-L Archives

Colleagues:

Some of you may have noticed that JSTOR no longer offers its limit-results-by-image feature. I for one found this very helpful as pictures in journal articles frequently contained details or unique views of works that were not available elsewhere. I queried JSTOR on this and their response is in part below. While they haven’t gotten rid of the feature, it’s a lot more difficult for our visual researchers to both find and use. The new version limits key-word image searching to the caption. While this is less “buggy” for JSTOR, is much less useful for most searchers. The old version allowed broader searches, e.g. articles on Amiens, and then users could scan images. Now, users must know pretty much what the exact caption of the photo is to find an image.

Does anyone or the Society feel that this should be addressed to JSTOR by its users?

Lee Sorensen

Duke University

After doing some digging with my coworker, we've discovered that while the original format for image searching is gone, the ability to search for them is not. We've learned that the original format wasn't always accurate, and often buggy, which is why it was done away with in our most recent update.

In order to search within images now, you will need to use the Advanced Search page. The drop-down menus to the right of the search boxes now have a "caption" option. This will return content with images and present you with similar - yet more accurate - search results.