English Dance and Song Winter 2021
This article appears in English Dance and Song, the magazine of the English Folk Dance and Song Society. The world’s oldest magazine for folk music and dance, EDS was first published in 1936 and is essential reading for anyone with a passion for folk arts.
Members of the English Folk Dance and Song Society can access past editions of Folk Music Journal, and its predecessors, on JSTOR. Mike Heaney explains how...
What is JSTOR?
JSTOR (short for ‘Journals Storage’) is an enormous database of journal articles and more, established originally as a way of allowing large research libraries to free up shelf-space by providing digital access to back issues of journals instead. Because it focuses on back issues instead of current issues, it does not compete directly with the large commercial vendors.
Those bodies that provide JSTOR with their journals (including EFDSS) receive income when subscribers read or download articles from them. Providers can also specify for how many years the content can be embargoed before being released to subscribers. In the case of Folk Music Journal this is currently three years, except for EFDSS members.
Subscribers can be institutions (most universities and many other libraries and educational bodies are subscribers) or individuals. Individuals can also search the content and buy copies of material on an ad hoc basis. Much of the content can only be accessed in this way, though some is openly available free of charge for all.
EFDSS on JSTOR
JSTOR includes not only the full run of Folk Music Journal (1965 on), but also of its predecessors, Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society (1932–1964), Journal of the English Folk Dance Society (1927–1931), The English-Folk-Dance Society’s Journal (1914–1915) and Journal of the Folk-Song Society (1899–1931).
Finding EFDSS journals on JSTOR
When you follow the link to JSTOR from the EFDSS members’ website you reach JSTOR’s Home Page; there should be a note at the top, “Access provided by English Folk Dance + Song Society”
To find the EFDSS journals, it’s probably easiest to use ‘Browse’ (just under the search box at the top of the page). Choose ‘Browse by Title’ on the drop-down list then click on ‘F’ in the alphabetical index. What you see should look like this:
(Check that ‘Journals’ is highlighted, it should do that automatically).
It’s a long list but just scroll down the page till you reach Folk Music Journal and click on it. This brings you to the page which lists Folk Music Journal and all its predecessors:
The issues are listed in reverse chronological order at the foot of the page, and the same for the predecessors if you click on their links from here.
Note that in the Browse view you only see what any subscriber can see, with the latest three years not visible. To find those you have to use the Search option.
Search
JSTOR has very powerful search capabilities. You can search for authors, titles, subjects, and search the full text of all the articles.
To find recent EFDSS content, put a few words from the title and/or author from a recent article into the search box (for example, “Weardale psalmody” or “Weardale Gailiunas” for Paul Gailiunas’s article “Weardale psalmody” in volume 12, number 1 (2021).
If the words you put in are rather general (for example, “Dance” and “Smith” you can choose ‘Advanced search’ (available if you click on the Search tab, from the dropdown list that appears) and specify the journal by scrolling down to the “Journal or Book title” box and entering “Folk music”. Then click on the search button.
When you’ve found the article and followed the link, the page displaying the text will also have at top left a link to the whole issue (underlined), which you can follow:
Once you have reached a journal page you can continue searches within the journal by choosing to search ‘In this journal’) in the search box at the top (Note, the different EFDSS titles count as different journals.)
For any article you find you can choose to ‘Download PDF’ using the box at the top right. Click the box opens a PDF version in your browser that can be printed or saved in the usual way. (Note that to use the other options, ‘Save’ or ‘Share’ you need an individual JSTOR account.)
Information generously prepared by Mike Heaney
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