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Release Notes

  • Updated

September 2024

  • You can now view, download, and upload transcripts (in VTT format) for audio and video items in Collection Loader and Forum. On JSTOR, users can view an item's transcript alongside the media and click on embedded timestamps to jump to specific points in the recording. For videos, transcripts are also used for closed captions in the media player.

August 2024

  • You can now upload thumbnail images (or replace the default thumbnail) for audio and video items in Collection Loader and Forum. Thumbnails for audio and video are displayed in search results and when browsing collections on JSTOR.

April 2024

  • Similar to managing your project fields in Forum, you can now reorder List fields with drag-and-drop or by specifying a position number. This will be reflected in the order of fields in the cataloging screen when creating or editing a List term.
  • When managing List fields in Forum, a new Sources & Lists column displays what linked authorities and controlled lists a field uses at a glance.

March 2024

  • When mapping multiple custom fields, you can now define the order that fields will display on the JSTOR item page.

December 2023

  • Based on feedback from our contributors, there's a new page layout for images on JSTOR. The new format is more consistent with other content types found on JSTOR, action buttons such as Save and Cite are more mobile-friendly, and metadata is now organized to the left of the image viewer.
  • There's a new JSTOR target mapping experience in Forum. The new mapping screen focuses your project's fields and provides better visibility and in-context information about available fields on JSTOR. See Map Fields to Targets for more information.
  • Publishing video and panorama content to JSTOR from Forum is now supported. Explore video and panorama on JSTOR and learn more about publishing these media types.
    • For video, supported file types are ASF, AVI, M4V, MOV, MP4, MPEG, WMV, and 3GP. Transcripts, captions, and thumbnails are automatically generated.
    • For panorama, supported file types are QTRV/MOV and JPEG.
  • Items in containers can now be sequenced and sorted by Sequential Order on container pages on JSTOR. To sequence items in a container, add a Number Field to your project and map to “Sequence Number” in your JSTOR publishing target. See Containers in Forum for more information.
  • Custom Fields in Forum now support linked authorities in JSTOR search. Previously, only the text value of a Linked Authority field was searchable on JSTOR when mapped to a Custom Field. Now, searches for variants of linked vocabulary terms (AAT, TNG, ULAN) will return relevant results that have been cataloged with the preferred term and vice versa.

November 2023

  • The JSTOR "Dates" field has two new attributes: earliest_date and latest_date. The Earliest/Latest Date fields are not displayed on JSTOR but allow researchers to filter and sort search results by date range. See Earliest/Latest Dates for details.
    Note: If you've previously mapped your "Earliest Date" and/or "Latest Date" project fields to Custom Fields in your JSTOR publishing target, it's not required that you re-map these fields.
  • You can now toggle the visibility of metadata fields on container pages on JSTOR. See Containers in Forum for more information.
  • To save time when publishing updates to your collections, only media files that have been created or modified since they were last published will be included in the publish operation. If you used the  "Publish metadata only" setting previously, that option has been removed since this is now the default behavior.

October 2023

August 2023

May 2023

  • Based on feedback from our contributors, Custom Fields now display above and before the License/Rights/Rights Notes, Resource Type, File Name, and SSID fields for images and primary source items on JSTOR. This ensures that users see descriptive metadata fields before administrative fields.

April 2023

  • Based on feedback from our contributors, "Item Date" is now "Date" in the metadata displayed for images and primary source items on JSTOR.

January 2023

November 2022

August 2022

When setting up a new JSTOR publishing target, editing an existing JSTOR target, or building a collection using the Collection Builder, you can now select the maximum download size for image items in your collection or prevent items from being downloaded. This setting applies to all applicable items within the collection and does not require you to republish your collection.

Options include:

  • No Downloads - Prevent item downloads for all items in the collection, regardless of content type.
  • 400 pixels (JPEG)
  • 1024 pixels (JPEG)
  • 3000 pixels (JPEG)
  • Maximum download size (JPEG) - For image items, the size (in pixels) of the original uploaded image file. Note that the downloaded file format and compression may differ from the original.

February 2022

You can now create Containers for your projects in JSTOR Forum. A Container describes the larger work or hierarchical organization that contains the item. Some examples of Containers include:

  • a title of a book, containing individual chapters
  • a title of a periodical, containing issues or articles
  • a series, box, and folder hierarchy in an archival collection

See JSTOR Compilations and Containers for more information on creating Containers in Forum.

January 2022

When publishing content to JSTOR, you can now sign up to receive an email notification with a publish summary as soon as your content is available. The notification includes the following information:

  • The date and time publishing was completed
  • A link to the project in Forum
  • The number of items that were successfully published
  • The number of items that failed to publish

October 2021

As of October 2021, JSTOR Forum users and contributors can update just the metadata for previously published Forum items. Previously, the publishing process included media processing and was often load-intensive and time-consuming as a result. Now, re-publishing includes only the specific item metadata changes you wish to make for a faster, more efficient experience.

When you select the JSTOR target of a previously published collection, you will find an option in the "Advanced" menu to choose "Publish metadata only".

We hope this makes your content curation in JSTOR Forum more intuitive and look forward to receiving your feedback at: forumsupport@jstor.org.

August 2021

As of August, 2021 an image rotate feature is available within the item view of JSTOR Forum for Admins and contributors.

When uploading a .JPG file to Forum, you will now be able to rotate the orientation of the image within the media panel area of the item view.

January 2021

We have heard from you that the separation of the Cataloger and Admin functions in Forum was problematic and are happy to announce that we are making improvements to the Forum user interface for an easier to navigate and more cohesive experience.

As of February 5, 2021 we are providing a streamlined way for administrators to access essential admin activities in a single Forum App (forum.jstor.org). Instead of navigating between applications to access Admin and Cataloging Tools, you can now access them in one application. Users without admin permissions will not experience any changes.

The Forum Admin environment will remain available for several weeks until the transition has completed. Moving forward, all admin functionality will be available in the cataloguing environment. 

  • Users with Administrative permissions will be able to view and access both "User Settings" (Users) and Statistics in the global navigation under the “Admin” Menu. This will not be available to users without Administrator permissions.
  • Project Settings are now available within each project. The "Project Settings" button is located on the right hand of the screen next to the “Add” button. Only administrators see and have access to these settings.
  • Lists have combined all the administrative features, creating and editing fields, and users into tabs at the top of the page, along with creating and editing terms.

October 2020

  • Publishing to JSTOR Community Collections now available. For more information, please see Setting up JSTOR Target.

September 2020

We've made major changes to the Forum User interface for an easier and better Forum experience!

  • The Dashboard. A dashboard gives you an overview of your products, showcasing your collection's imagery. There are statistics available here that help you see how much of your collection is being shared.
  • Improved Navigation. We've created a global navigation that ensures Forum users always have a quick and easy way to access all of your collections and tools for publishing. You can see this highlighted in the red box in the screenshot above.
  • Simplified Actions/Options. We've combined the Actions and Options menus into a single Actions Bar that appears when you click an item's checkbox.
  • Smarter Scrolling. Now when viewing a single record, the media panel is always visible and accessible, no matter how far down you've scrolled.
  • Project Switcher Design. We've replaced the large project sidebar with a quick project switcher menu found at the top of your screen, ensuring your projects are still just one click away!

June 2020

  • Notifications in Forum:
    • Users will be notified when Forum adds features for cataloging and publishing 
  • UI Improvements:
    • Added a Splash Screen for empty projects to guide next steps.
    • Uploads can now continue in the background.
    • Added an upload tracker to the activity window to track status of uploads. Includes details in case of upload failures.
    • Added an IIIF viewer to the Edit Item panel to allow better viewing of uploaded media.
    • Added a PDF Viewer to the Edit Item panel to allow better viewing of PDF files.
    • Users can group compound objects when uploading large batches. Forum will automatically manage the uploads into a single item based on filename matching.
    • Users can delete multiple sets together.
    • Users can easily access the Cataloging Guide.

May 2020

Institution pages for JSTOR’s Open Community Collections can be created manually in Forum Admin. These pages are only available to Forum users who have been whitelisted to publish to JSTOR. Once an institution has been whitelisted, they will find the institution page option in the top menu in Forum admin. 

January 2020

In preparation for adding the ability to publish from Forum to JSTOR’s Community Collections initiative we allow select participants to publish their collections to JSTOR resulting in the publication of Chatham University’s literary magazine, The Minor Bird.

December 2019

We are excited to announce a few updates we’ve made around improving the front end upload experience in Forum. We wanted to make the upload experience for users faster and easier so they can get their content in more quickly, with less frustration, and begin working on it so it can be published and shared. We decided to tackle this in three ways:

  • Automatically retry uploading media files when they fail
  • Make it easier to see when uploads have failed
  • Allow users to continue their work in Forum while the upload happens in the background.

November 2019

  • When working in a newly created Forum project, you will now see prompts on how to upload media files or create a blank record.  This is especially useful for new Forum users.
  • You can now crop your collection image from the Target tab in Forum Admin.  Manage Publishing Targets has the information you need to set up your Artstor publishing target.

  • Feel free to edit list terms directly in the  data record once a term is linked to a field!

October 2019

  • We are happy to announce that JSTOR Forum cataloging tools are officially WCAG Level AA compliant!  Download our VPAT document for details.
  • We’ve enhanced term search and selection from your project's controlled lists by adding a dropdown arrow to an improved list field. For easy access to list terms, click on the arrow and select a term. Partial searching is enabled from this list as well as from the list term window when you click on the list icon.  Check out Catalog with List Terms for more info!

August 2019

  • Forum can now accept uploads of multiple compound objects directly from the project's item panel.  From Upload, select Group Compound Objects so that Forum can gather the files based on filenames; continue to Add groups of image files before uploading. 
  • New items with correctly sequenced images will display in your project.  Compound Objects has more information on how to use this new feature
  • Forum Admin has an updated project setup workflow.  Follow the prompts to set up a new or edit an existing project.  For more information check out Create, Copy, Rename and Delete Projects and Manage Publishing Targets. 
  • Creator and Subject values are now clickable when viewing an item in Artstor. When you click on one of these values, you will see other items in Artstor from the same creator or use the same subject term.
  • We created two community lists for RightsStatement.org and Creative Commons licenses. These are also connected to the Visual Resources and Dublin Core templates. If you follow the instructions in RightsStatement.org and Creative Commons Licenses, when you publish content with these terms, the items will display with badges and link to the statement or license in Artstor.

June 2019

  • We have created an article that we hope will assist with learning how to use Forum. Check out Checklists: A Guide to Learning Forum and let us know what you think.
  • We have launched a brand new support site for JSTOR Forum
  • There is a new download size of 3000 pixels that you can configure for your publishing targets. This is to support monitors and projectors with increased resolution. If you select this option for an existing publishing target, don't forget to republish your content so all of your items get updated with this new download size.

May 2019

  • You can now create new Forum users and add them to projects all within Forum Admin! There is a User Settings tab where you can create new Forum users, edit their access to Forum Admin, and delete them so they can no longer log into Forum. Once a user is created or showing in the User Settings tab, you will still need to add them to specific projects. Manage User Access includes more information about the recently added User Settings tab and granting users access to Forum. This is hopefully streamlines the process of creating new users because you no longer need to use the Artstor Admin site to create new Forum users.
  • When creating new publishing targets, we now suggest mappings for your project fields to the target fields. After creating a new target, if you select Explore Mappings you will see the suggested mappings highlighted in yellow. You can edit and save these or select Go Back to remove them. Map Fields to Targets includes more information about mapping fields.
  • There is an Overview tab for your projects in Forum Admin. This tab gives you a snapshot of the fields, cataloging forms, publishing targets, and users in your project.
  • Compound objects can now be downloaded from Artstor! In addition to viewing in Artstor the compound objects you publish from Forum, users can now also download the full or detail view of individual images in a compound object.

April 2019

  • Try our filters! To make filtering easier and keyboard accessible, we have an updated filtering option. The original filter option will remain available while we collect feedback about the new filters. You can turn on the updated filters by selecting "Try Forum's updated filters!". The filters provide the most commonly filtered fields (Publishing Status, Thumbnail, Filename, and Created By) and all additional fields under More Filters.
  • The list selection window will remain open so you can search for and select multiple terms from a list. This is the same behavior you see when using the Getty vocabularies.
  • To build upon dragging and dropping media files to upload, you can now add multiple batches of images to the upload queue.

March 2019

  • We added a tile view for the item panel that allows you to see your media as a small, medium, or large tile.
  • You can change your password within Forum by selecting your username in the top right corner then selecting Change Password. Learn more about this in Access Forum.
  • You can now copy values from the item panel and paste them into a field in the edit tab or elsewhere.
  • We brought back the ability to drag and drop media to upload. Drop the media into the item panel to start an upload.
  • You can now add a collection image when you create new institutional or public collection targets. This 240 by 240 pixel JPG or PNG image displays next to the description. Some examples of the collection image include an institution's logo or an image from the collection that represents the content. Manage Publishing Targets includes information on how to create and edit publishing targets. Previously, you had to first create a target and then edit it to add a collection image. We hope this makes creating new Artstor collections easier by simplifying the steps.

February 2019

  • We began using the HTTPS secure protocol for JSTOR Forum. This will not impact your Forum workflows, but after this change, Forum will meet the standard browser security requirement that is important to many of you and us.
  • You can order your columns from the columns configuration window. Previously, you could only order your columns by dragging and dropping them from the item panel, but this allows you an additional keyboard accessible way to organize your project's view. The columns configuration window is also where you can hide columns from view or restore the default view.
  • We brought back the ability to drag and drop items into sets. You used to be able to do this in the old Forum interface and now it is back in the new Forum. If you don't have any sets created, you can also drag and drop items into the set area to create a new one.
  • Your Master Record will remain selected until you clear it. Previously, the master record would be cleared when logged out of Forum.
  • The Search Image in Google option is now available for compound objects. Whatever image is displaying in the media viewer window can be searched in Google now to find additional information about it. Google Image Search includes more about the Search Image in Google feature.
  • You can now order your cataloging forms in Forum Admin. If you need to order your cataloging forms at any point so they display in a certain sequence, you can drag and drop or enter a sequence number in Forum Admin. Manage Cataloging Forms provides information about ordering cataloging forms.
  • When adding a new field to a project, you can also add it to your cataloging forms at the same time. Before you needed to create the field and then add the field to cataloging forms in a separate step. We hope this makes adding new fields more efficient and easier. Learn more about adding new fields to your project in Manage Project Fields.
  • You can delete all items in a project easily by selecting the Actions menu and then Delete All. This option is distinct from deleting select items and displays the total items in your project that will be deleted. As a precaution, you will be asked to confirm this action before the content is deleted from your project. Suppress and Delete Items includes more information about deleting items.
  • So you can see your custom fields more easily in the item panel, we moved system-generated fields (such as Updated By and Published By) after your custom fields. Based on usage and feedback, we saw that it was important to keep SSID, Filename, Created By, and Created On in the beginning, but all other system-generated fields will display after your custom fields in the item panel. If you already changed the item panel view by reordering or hiding columns, this change will not impact your settings. This new column order only impacts users with the default column view in the item panel.

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