JSTOR
Branding an AI-assisted platform to bring uniquely human endeavors to light

The humanities, arts, and social sciences disciplines are deeply human explorations that no machine can match. With it we develop critical thinking, creative innovation, cultural understanding, and civic engagement. That’s why ITHAKA—JSTOR’s parent brand—launched a new platform for these materials to be discoverable now, and in the future.

What does it do?

More than 90% of scholarly materials lack metadata essential for researchers to discover them. Meanwhile, expectations for access is rising and budgets for libraries and archives are falling.

ITHAKA’s solution is Digital Stewardship Services. Built with JSTOR Seeklight—AI co-created with librarians and archivists—it responsibly streamlines collections processing without sacrificing professional oversight or scholarly rigor. The seamless platform provides exponential time savings. Read more.

  • 170% faster describing, reviewing, and publishing material

  • 13+ million (and growing) items processed, preserved, managed, and shared

    Awards include: The Bronze Anthem Award for best use of AI in education, art, and culture and The C.F.W. Coker Award from the Society of American Archivists


Branding Architecture

The nonprofit organization includes the parent brand ITHAKA and three product brands: JSTOR, Portico, and ITHAKA S+R. It is a trusted leader in emerging technologies for higher learning and cultural institutions worldwide. Insights from our community helped ensure our brand decisions clearly communicate product relevancy, value, and our shared mission to increase access to knowledge so people can improve their lives through learning.

The Options
JSTOR already had 30+ years of earned trust. When we mapped the architecture options — a standalone brand, a JSTOR sub-brand, or full integration into the JSTOR brand — the answer came into focus quickly.

A new standalone brand under ITHAKA would have required building recognition from scratch in a market that already trusted JSTOR deeply. A sub-brand of JSTOR risked creating ambiguity about the relationship between stewardship and discovery — two things that should feel like one seamless journey for the user.

The Decision
Integrating Digital Stewardship Services into the JSTOR brand directly tied collections processing to the discovery happening for 81M+ annual users on the JSTOR research platform. It did something else, too: it modernized the legacy brand, and raised awareness of the advanced tech features and rich media available on JSTOR.org.

Product Name
The name Digital Stewardship Services shows domain expertise by reflecting the audiences’ language and in-depth knowledge of their work.

AI-assisted Processing Tool Name
The name JSTOR Seeklight™ is intentionally inspirational. It connects to the end goal of the librarians and archivists bringing knowledge to light, and to researchers making discoveries on the JSTOR research platform.

Messaging Framework
The JSTOR message framework is a source of truth document for all Stewardship messaging. It is a valuable asset and living document to achieve cross-discipline goals. It effectively and efficiently supports writing for leadership, sales, product education, and marketing.

Results:

JSTOR now stands for research discovery plus scholarly collections processing

The 30 year old JSTOR brand has renewed relevance and tech leadership

300+ institutions worldwide using Digital Stewardship Service

40+ charter members using JSTOR Seeklight

13+ million items processed, preserved, managed, and shared

The Team

Brand architecture

My Role: I co-led the brand architecture discovery, proposal, and presentation alongside the marketing leader.

The Team: Marketing leadership collaboration for brand brand architecture discovery, proposal, and presentation; research team for qualitative surveys; organizational leadership for final decision.

Naming

My Role: I co-led the naming strategy and the selection of the external naming agency in collaboration with the marketing leader. I also provided support for research.

The Team: Marketing leadership collaboration for external naming agency recommendations; user researchers for qualitative surveys; organizational leadership for final decision.

Messaging Framework

My Role: I led the messaging framework project planning and informational interviews with internal stakeholders and assessed insights from qualitative interviews. I managed both the copywriter and copyeditor. I presented and socialized the final framework for cross-discipline teams including marketing, education, and product teams.

The Team: Research team for qualitative surveys; internal stakeholders for insights; copywriter and copyeditor for final messaging document; product marketing specialist for review and approval.

Brand Refresh and Website Redesign

See how we came to understand our stewardship audience and how those insights guided the JSTOR brand refresh and website redesign.

JSTOR brand refresh