JSTOR describes itself as "a full-text journal database of more than 1,200 titles in the fields of African-American studies, anthropology, architecture, Asian studies, biological sciences, botany, ecology, economics, education, film, finance, folklore, history, language, literature, mathematics, middle east studies, music, philosophy, political science, population/demography, religion, sociology, and statistics.”
JSTOR searching is bit different than other databases. It doesn't offer a thesaurus or a list of subject terms, so searching is dependent on the keywords you use and the synonyms you put together using Boolean operators (This is where the background knowledge you've built comes in handy). Within the advanced search, JSTOR offers fielded searching:
"Advanced search behaves similarly to regular search in many ways, however one key difference is in the field options you may use to adjust the level of detail in your search results. Advanced Search keywords are set to "All fields" by default unless you manually select one a field from the drop-down menu to apply to your search.
The following options are available in the drop-down menu:
JSTOR offers limiters that can narrow your results such as item type, language, publication date, or journal filter.
You can also use short codes in JSTOR.
Commonly used short codes include:
JSTOR utilizes the normal Boolean operators—AND, OR, NOT—but also offers a NEAR option—NEAR 5, NEAR 10, NEAR 25—"The NEAR operator looks for the combinations of keywords within 5, 10, or 25 words places of each other. The NEAR operator only works when searching for single keyword combinations. For example, you may search for cat NEAR 5 dog, but not "domesticated cat" NEAR 5 dog."
The JSTOR Search Help webpage gives all of the tips and tricks for searching JSTOR specifically.
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