[WEB4LIB] Overlap analysis of online journals

[Tim Bucknall BUCKNALL]

At the University of North Carolina at Greensboro we have a very nice home 
grown OpenURL link resolver and knowledge base that is now used by 25 
institutions. One feature of Journal Finder is an overlap analysis tool.

I don't personally think our overlap tool (or anyone else's) generates 
terribly useful data. It does tell you what percentage of journals appear 
in multiple databases, but that isn't really meaningful in and of itself. 
After all, a title may appear in two databases - but have only a year of 
coverage in one and 10 years of coverage in the other. And that difference 
in coverage may of may not really matter to you, depending on what the 
title is. Or a title may appear in two databases, but have a significant 
embargo in one, but not the other. Again, that might or might not matter, 
depending on the particular title. 

So, knowing that there is a 45% overlap in title coverage between 2 
databases doesn't really give you enough info to make a decision. Which 
titles overlap? How do their years of coverage overlap? Are the unique 
titles the ones that you really care about, or are those the titles that 
the aggregator has "thrown in" to inflate their total number of titles 
covered?

Point being - Overlap analysis figures by themselves can be very 
misleading. And if you have to go in and really look at the individual 
titles anyway, there really isn't much value to knowing what percentage of 
overlap exists between two databases.




"VanderHart, Robert" <Robert.VanderHart at umassmed.edu> 
Sent by: web4lib at webjunction.org
11/24/2004 10:30 AM
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[WEB4LIB] Overlap analysis of online journals






Serials Solutions ejournal management system offers a feature called
Overlap Analysis, which allows you to compare databases to see where
they overlap in coverage.

I'm interested in hearing opinions from Serials Solutions customers on
this feature.  How useful have you found it?  Does it really aid you in
collection development? 

I'm also interested in hearing from anyone who's implemented a similar
feature in-house (i.e. "homegrown").  What system are you using (PHP,
ColdFusion, Perl)?  How difficult was it to set up?

Thanks in advance for any feedback.  Have a nice holiday!

Robert Vander Hart
Electronic Resources Librarian
Lamar Soutter Library
University of Massachusetts Medical School
Worcester  MA  01655

Voice: 508-856-3290
Email: Robert.VanderHart at umassmed.edu
Web: http://library.umassmed.edu 






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