Steve Ely

LIS database comparisons and relevant tools

While I was at Pitt, an ARL school, I got a bit spoiled for database access.  One thing I’ve especially missed since is the broad access to all the LIS databases I could want.  As both an ARL member and the home of an MLIS program, Pitt has twice as much reason to have all three of Library and Information Science Abstracts (LISA) from ProQuest/CSA Illumina, Library, Information Science, and Technology Abstracts (LISTA) from EBSCO, and Library Literature and Information Science from H.W. Wilson.  LISTA is everywhere–EBSCO actually offers it for free, so not only is it available from all good academic and public libraries, but it’s also on the web at www.libraryresearch.com.

I do miss also having the others, though.  It’s nice to feel when you want to research an LIS question that you’re not missing anything.  Since subscription access to the Wilson and ProQuest products isn’t a realistic option anymore, I’ve been meaning to get a handle on just what it is I’m missing.  I need to compare the details of the journal lists for each of the three.  It would be nice if there were some kind of online tool to automate the process and save me the tediousness.

I didn’t expect there might really be such a tool.  Then on the LIBREF-L listserv this week, someone asked about an online site to compare different databases, and a couple of tools came up in response that are helpful but imperfectly so.

Several people pointed to something called CUFTS, which allows comparison of up to four different databases to see where journal coverage overlaps.  It also has a tool to look up journals by title or ISSN and see what database indexes them.

The former is here, and the latter is here. There is a main page here, but the links there (and on the Tools page) tend to be outdated or broken.  You dig deep enough through there, and you can get to the functioning stuff, but the surface is falling apart.

It was sort of helpful in comparing a couple of the LIS databases (LISA isn’t among the databases it can compare), although it definitely didn’t do everything the way I’d like.  While it is helpful to see which journals are covered by both of the databases in the comparison, I was hoping to see which are only covered by the Wilson one and not the EBSCO one, so I can know what I’m missing.  Unfortunately, I’m still left to sort that answer out for myself.

CUFTS is helpful to the extent that it tells me there are 237 duplicate holdings between Wilson’s Library Literature & Information Science and EBSCO’s Library, Information Science &Technology Abstracts.  A look at the journal listing page for the former tells me it includes a total of 316 total journals, accounting for name changes.  So at least now I know there are 79 journals Wilson’s indexing that EBSCO isn’t.  I just have to figure out what they each are.

While CUFTS was somewhat helpful but inadequate,  someone else today in the same thread on that listserv suggested the JISC Academic Database Assessment Tool (ADAT).  The functionality there seems to be pretty much exactly what I’d like.  Unfortunately, the list of databases it can compare is tiny.   None of the three I’m interested in are even included.   Perhaps the list will grow.

In the meantime, I’ll have to sort out the precise difference for myself.  Either way, I can only hope that I can search most of the relevant journals individually online or something.  Or maybe there’s some way to search them all together that I haven’t found yet.

Or maybe I should just be happy for now to do some quality research in the journals I do have.