Guilford College is now freely sharing more than 800 items of its growing collection of student scholarship and Quaker heritage in JSTOR’s Open Community Collections.
JSTOR, as part of the not-for-profit parent institution ITHAKA, is helping the academic community use digital technologies to advance research and teaching in sustainable ways. Guilford’s currently published collections include the Guilford College Thesis Collection, the Journal of Undergraduate Mathematics (JUM), the Guilford Review, and The Southern Friend: Journal of the North Carolina Friends Historical Society.
This resource places college research on an international platform for scholars everywhere to access. These particular collections were a priority as the College's initial JSTOR project to especially feature Guilford’s own scholarship. Through this pilot endeavor, Guilford College aims to increase the discoverability and use of student scholarship, such as the honors theses and undergraduate mathematics journal. Additionally, various collections from the Quaker Archives, which illuminate Quaker life, faith, and practice in the Society of Friends, will be published to JSTOR for public usage and research.
JSTOR invited Guilford to join this new initiative a year ago and then the pandemic hit. It seemed unlikely the College could pursue the opportunity. Just at the right time, Emily Atwell '19 reached out to Archivist Gwen Gosney Erickson to explore if she might base her graduate capstone project at her alma mater. Gratefully, prior backend work and Emily’s passion for the project allowed the College to move forward.
Guilford is the first college to feature theses on this platform and JSTOR sees it as a model for others. Theses completed for May 2021 are now available in the Guilford College Thesis Collection along with many others from past years. See https://www.jstor.org/site/guilford/ for links to all three projects.