The e-JAH: The Online Future of the Past

To better serve the research and teaching needs of our members, OAH will soon provide a full-text, fully searchable electronic version of the Journal of American History (JAH). At the upcoming OAH annual meeting in St. Louis, attendees will be able to "test drive" and help shape the new online JAH. This exciting new project, which aims to change the way individuals use the JAH, is made possible through a unique collaborative project called the History Cooperative.

We are maintaining the high standards of our print publication in this new electronic venture by joining the American Historical Association (publisher of the American Historical Review), the University of Illinois Press, and the National Academy Press to create this new venture. The University of Illinois Press has coordinated the project and provided start-up funds. Staff at the National Academy Press <http://www.nap.edu/>--publishers of material for the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Research Council--have lent their technical expertise in electronic publishing to the development and maintenance of the project.

For members of the OAH, the web-based electronic JAH will be a dynamic online companion to the print JAH. Available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week and at no additional cost, it will supplement your printed version of the JAH. The online edition will begin with the June 1999 issue. No longer will you have to store your journals in the basement or journey to a library to obtain a copy of a memorable article or review. To facilitate your research, a search engine will scan the full texts of all journals at the History Cooperative website. Currently, those journals include the American Historical Review (AHR) and the JAH, but will grow to include other history journals in the coming months. While individuals can search all titles housed at the site, they will only have access to the full texts of those to which they currently subscribe.

As the online JAH moves from the drawing board to the Internet, we will pay close attention to satisfying the prerequisites of a useful site: crisp organization, clear navigation, and fast printing capabilities. But we want to do much more than simply replicate the print JAH. We also will identify sections of each issue that can be most enhanced by the new format. For example, an electronic version of Recent Scholarship--the Journal's compilation of current articles, books, and dissertations--will become a searchable database. In effect, it could evolve into a comprehensive online bibliography of American history. The Journal's reviews of books, exhibitions, movies, textbooks and teaching, will also be significantly enriched with additional content and links to related material.

This is an exciting time for the history profession and for scholarly publishing. By joining together, the JAH, AHR, and other journals that become part of the History Cooperative will have the synergy to exploit the full range of possibilities of the web. To better meet your needs, we seek your input. A prototype of the online JAH will be available near the entrance of the book exhibitions at the OAH annual meeting in St. Louis, and a session devoted to the new cooperative will be held on 1 April at 1:00 p.m. We invite you to test drive the system in St. Louis. For those of you who cannot attend the annual meeting, please visit and bookmark the History Cooperative's website, currently under development at <http://www.historycooperative.org/>. Your comments and ideas are important to the success of this project. Please take a moment and relay your ideas to the JAH’s acting editor, David Nord, at <nord@indiana.edu>.

Scott M. Stephan is a senior editorial assistant at the Journal of American History and a doctoral candidate in history at Indiana University, Bloomington.


Table of Contents		The e-JAH: The online future of the past Scott M. Stephan
Click on the cover for the December 1999 issue		To better serve the research and teaching needs of our members, OAH will soon provide a full-text, fully searchable electronic version of the Journal of American History (JAH). At the upcoming OAH annual meeting in St. Louis, attendees will be able to "test drive" and help shape the new online JAH. This exciting new project, which aims to change the way individuals use the JAH, is made possible through a unique collaborative project called the History Cooperative. We are maintaining the high standards of our print publication in this new electronic venture by joining the American Historical Association (publisher of the American Historical Review), the University of Illinois Press, and the National Academy Press to create this new venture. The University of Illinois Press has coordinated the project and provided start-up funds. Staff at the National Academy Press <http://www.nap.edu/>--publishers of material for the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Research Council--have lent their technical expertise in electronic publishing to the development and maintenance of the project. For members of the OAH, the web-based electronic JAH will be a dynamic online companion to the print JAH. Available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week and at no additional cost, it will supplement your printed version of the JAH. The online edition will begin with the June 1999 issue. No longer will you have to store your journals in the basement or journey to a library to obtain a copy of a memorable article or review. To facilitate your research, a search engine will scan the full texts of all journals at the History Cooperative website. Currently, those journals include the American Historical Review (AHR) and the JAH, but will grow to include other history journals in the coming months. While individuals can search all titles housed at the site, they will only have access to the full texts of those to which they currently subscribe. As the online JAH moves from the drawing board to the Internet, we will pay close attention to satisfying the prerequisites of a useful site: crisp organization, clear navigation, and fast printing capabilities. But we want to do much more than simply replicate the print JAH. We also will identify sections of each issue that can be most enhanced by the new format. For example, an electronic version of Recent Scholarship--the Journal's compilation of current articles, books, and dissertations--will become a searchable database. In effect, it could evolve into a comprehensive online bibliography of American history. The Journal's reviews of books, exhibitions, movies, textbooks and teaching, will also be significantly enriched with additional content and links to related material. This is an exciting time for the history profession and for scholarly publishing. By joining together, the JAH, AHR, and other journals that become part of the History Cooperative will have the synergy to exploit the full range of possibilities of the web. To better meet your needs, we seek your input. A prototype of the online JAH will be available near the entrance of the book exhibitions at the OAH annual meeting in St. Louis, and a session devoted to the new cooperative will be held on 1 April at 1:00 p.m. We invite you to test drive the system in St. Louis. For those of you who cannot attend the annual meeting, please visit and bookmark the History Cooperative's website, currently under development at <http://www.historycooperative.org/>. Your comments and ideas are important to the success of this project. Please take a moment and relay your ideas to the JAH’s acting editor, David Nord, at <nord@indiana.edu>. Scott M. Stephan is a senior editorial assistant at the Journal of American History and a doctoral candidate in history at Indiana University, Bloomington.