Journalist’s Resource (JR) is a registration-free, open-access website (under a Creative Commons license) created by the staff and graduate students of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard University Kennedy School to provide scholarly materials, covering numerous topics, to journalists, students, educators and the general public.
The simple layout, large tabs, easy-to-read hyperlinks and no advertisement clutter of the JR homepage makes it easy to navigate the six main sections of the website: About, Journalists, Instructors, Studies Database, Skills and Syllabi. The homepage also includes In the News and New Posts sections; selected studies from their database; and two short, introductory videos.
The About section of the website simply provides users with information concerning the Journalist’s Resource project, while the Journalists section provides a guide to using the site for practicing journalists, Research Criteria for the items contained in the Studies Database and a list of more than 70 Journalism Organizations broken down in to six groups, Journalism Associations, Support Associations, Trade Associations, Training Resources, Watchdog Groups and Research Organizations, all with operational links to their websites.
While reference librarians who are working with journalism, communication and media studies faculty will be able to guide them to the Instructors and Syllabi sections for lesson plans and complete courses, reference librarians who are embedded in these courses will find an abundance of journalism practice-based materials and resources to provide to students in the Skills section of the website. The Skills section is divided in to four categories: Conversations: The Pros Talk About their Work, Research: Sources and Strategies for Your Stories, Style: How to Write with Grace and Authority and Reporting: Best Practices and Study-Based Ideas. Under these four sections, there are more than 140 pertinent journalism “skills” (such as Research Chat: Rajiv Chandrasekaran on Conflict-Zone and Military Reporting; Informing the News: The Need for Knowledge-Based Reporting, Associated Press Style Basics and News Apps; and Data: A Brief Primer and Overview) that will be beneficial to the students.
Reference librarians serving broader populations in academic, public, middle-school and high-school libraries will find the Studies Database to be the most useful section of the website. This is divided in to six categories, Government, Economics, Politics, Society, Environment and International, with eight different subjects under each category. At the time of this review, librarians would find more than 10,000 up-to-date, authoritative studies in the growing database on everything from the Affordable Care Act to Zambia.
Reference librarians can rest assured the articles in the database are scholarly. According to the information posted on the JR website, articles to be included in the Studies Database must be the product of authoritative institutions such as major USA universities, research organizations or governmental bodies; based on rigorous research, without bias or ideological motivation; current; published in a peer-reviewed journal; and freely available. With these high standards in place, it is easy to understand why JR was named as one of the American Library Association’s “Best Free Reference Web Sites” in 2013 (Reference and User Services Association/Emerging Technologies in Reference Section).
The intuitive design of JR’s homepage allows users to browse the Studies Database three ways: via a keyword search (utilizing the simple search boxes located at the top, centre of the page and top, right-hand side of the page), by categories and popular tags (at the bottom of the page) and using the Studies Database tab (at the top, centre of the page above the search box).
To test the usability of the JR website for this review, it was viewed on a Windows 7 machine running Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome (19-inch widescreen/1,280 × 800 resolution) with a broadband connection (69.01 Mbps download speed) without any difficulties. However, in the twenty-first century, journalists are not the only professionals required to work “on the go”; reference librarians are as well and they will be happy to know that JR is a very mobile-friendly website. In addition to the aforementioned desktop computer, the JR website was also comfortably viewed on an iPad 4 running iOS 7.0.4 (9.7-inch 2048 × 1,536 (264 ppi) retina display) with a wireless connection (0.65 Mbps download speed). The website was also browsed on an Avail Android mobile phone with a 3.5-inch 320 × 480 (HVGA) display utilizing the aforementioned wireless connection. JR Mobile loaded quickly and searches were conducted in short order. (The JR Mobile button is located at the top, left-hand side of the homepage.)
In short, most reference librarians will find current, useful and scholarly information to support students from middle school to those working on terminal degrees in multiple disciplines on the Journalist’s Resource website.
