JSTOR, established as an independent not-for-profit organization in August 1995, serves a similar set of functions by digitally archiving (non-current) print publications. Its mission--of preserving journals, reducing long-term capital expenditures, and assisting publishers provide electronic access (and thus broader access) is similar to MUSE's. However, JSTOR is more interdisciplinary, and thus freer from geographical constraints; in representing a consortium of libraries, it archives ten scholarly journals, covering a range of disciplines (history, economics, math, philosophy, education, etc.) JSTOR, unlike MUSE, focuses exclusively on preservation. In collaboration with journal publishers, print issues before 1990 are scanned into the database and indexed.

The lag period, called the "moving wall," defines the "point at which the JSTOR archive stops, and 'current issues' start." In some cases, the moving wall is three years (meaning the last issue available in the JSTOR archive would be one published three years ago); in other cases "it is five years . . . thus . . . the archive is being constantly updated and refreshed" (JSTOR). While clearly supporting the publishing industry (rather than competing with or supplanting it), JSTOR provides greater services to academics. As supporting materials on the JSTOR website suggest, "For publishers that are beginning to publish current issues in electronic formats, we are working to establish technological linkages that will make it possible for users to search seamlessly from the current issue [published elsewhere] right back through the first issue in the JSTOR archive."

This articulation of previously published journals and current ones marks a significant difference between JSTOR and MUSE. Whereas the first remains isolated as the property of a particular academic press, JSTOR begins to breach those barriers. In years to come, such articulated archives will be essential for effective academic research. Thus, metaphorically, the archival "space" is both confined, as an archive, website, or database, and expansive--in the sense of community building. Such spaces presuppose a system of opening and closing that both isolates them and makes them penetrable" (Foucault 26). If scholars can penetrate each others' spaces on the WWW, then interdisciplinary knowledge itself is more accessible (physically and intellectually) and valued for all academics. JSTOR is hastening this process by promising to expand its database to 100 journals in 10-15 disciplines over the next three years.

Note that JSTOR allows inter- and intra-textual searches. Searching for terms or concepts in two different journals (political science and economics) might expand the political scientist's sphere of influence (as writer, reader, critic) and deemphasize his or her expertise. Thus the intellectual value of the work itself, or a body of works, increases, rather than the prestige of the publishing "house," the author's name or reputation, or a particular institution represented (author affiliation). Notwithstanding these notable advantages of JSTOR over MUSE, the former is no less a living space than the latter. It remains a manifestation of what Michel Foucault understands as the problems of "contemporary technical work."