Overlap Analysis

Comparing two databases from competing vendors

If you want to compare coverage of two databases from competing vendors (e.g. EBSCO vs. ProQuest), as the vendor for a comparison.

Chances are they will be able to provide this information, saving time.

Comparing a database with titles the library already holds

Go to the vendor website and download a title list in Excel for the collection you want to compare.

Copy the Excel file and remove all columns but ISSN or ISBN.

Note: Alma only lets you compare ISSN or ISBN, not both, so sort by identifier type and remove the rows with the identifier you will not be comparing. If you want to compare ISSNs and ISBNs, you will have to do this process in two steps.

You will be left with a file with one column only, like this:

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Alma

Resource Management => Advanced Tools => Overlap Analysis

Submit New Report

Selected Titles

Next

File [select your file of ISSNs or ISBNs.]

Next

Report Name [enter name]

Report Description [enter description, e.g. "EBSCOhost Communication & Mass Media complete journals as compared with repository holdings"]

Submit

Refresh [until report is complete]

View

There will be three report types:

• • Selected Titles - Title Overlap report

    • This report lists titles in the Source Database that exist in the repository more than once. Provided: Title, ISSN, Electronic Collections, and Coverage years.

  • Selected Titles - Not in Db report

    • This report lists titles in the Source Database that do not exist in the repository. Provided: ISSN only.

  • Selected Titles - Unique Titles report

    • This report lists titles in the Source Database that exist in the repository once. Provided: Title, ISSN, Electronic Collection, and Coverage years.

Note: The first report and the third report essentially do the same thing: they provide the titles in the Source Database that the library already has, and tell you what the library's coverage is so that you can compare it to the original spreadsheet you downloaded from the vendor.

The second report tells you what is unique in the source database, but provides only ISSN's, so you need to go back and painstakingly compare them against the original Excel file downloaded from the publisher site.

Note: All three of these analyses only produce a title comparison, not a coverage comparison, since the input file contains only identifiers.