Part of poster presentation "Creating eJournal Management Reports using Microsoft Access" at the 2013 Charleston Conference.

1. Step by Step: Using Microsoft Access to conduct an overlap analysis of ejournal packages
Scenario: A library may have only sufficient funding to subscribe to one package of ejournals for
its Business Administration program. As a first step in its purchasing decision, the Library
conducts an overlap comparison of the ejournal titles available from two competing business
packages, Proquest/ABI Inform Complete and Ebsco Business Source Complete.
Step 1: The Library obtains the title lists as an Excel file from each vendor, reformats and cleans
up the data, so that the data is clean and consistent (for example, the ISSN number format is
entered consistently as NNNN-NNNN). The data in the Excel spreadsheet contains only a few
essential data elements: the journal title, the ISSN, the coverage dates for the title, the vendor
title id number, and the URL.
Ebsco Business Source Complete titles in Excel:
Proquest ABI/Inform titles in Excel:
Step by Step Access reports/ Teresa Negrucci, Resource Acq. & Mgmt. Librarian (teresanegrucci@brown.edu)
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2. Step 2: Import the Excel spreadsheet into Access as tables. In Microsoft Access, open a new
database, then click on the External data tab, and then the import from Excel icon. In the “Select
the source and destination of the data” dialog box, click on the “import the source data into a
new table in the current database” option and use the browse button to locate the Excel
spreadsheet.
Open a new database in Microsoft Access
Import each Excel spreadsheet into Access as tables
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3. The Import Spreadsheet wizard will guide you, step by step, to import each Excel data sheet as
an Access table. Make sure that the data type assigned to each field is consistent for each table
that is being created. Access will not allow matching of a data field if the field’s data type is not
consistent across each table.
Import Wizard prompt 1: Select the Excel spreadsheet to import
Import Wizard prompt 2: Confirm data fields (column headings) and data types to import
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4. Import Wizard prompt 3: No primary key is needed
Import Wizard prompt 4: Name the table and click “finish” to import the data as a table
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5. Step 3: Use the Query Design tool to create the SQL query in Access.
Once each spreadsheet is loaded as a table, click on the create tab, then the query design icon.
Note that each of the spreadsheets is now an Access table (left column of the screen). Highlight
and click each of the tables in the “show table” dialog box, and click “add.” This will add each of
the tables into the query display box.
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6. The query display box, with the two tables and their data fields in the query design area at the top
of the screen, and the query output box at the bottom of the screen.
By highlighting the data field in one table then dragging the cursor to the same data field (for
example, the ISSN) in the other table, Access will create a connection line (the join), which will
create the SQL query that matches the data element in each table.
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7. The actual SQL query, which can be viewed by changing the view button
to SQL view is:
SELECT
FROM [Ebsco Business Source Complete] INNER JOIN [Proquest ABI Inform Complete] ON
[Ebsco Business Source Complete].ISSN = [Proquest ABI Inform Complete].ISSN;
However, by staying in design view, you have a visual display of the query.
As a final step of creating the SQL query, you will need to add the output fields to the query
output box (bottom part of screen). Simply highlight the asterisk * in each of the tables, and drag
the asterisk to the query output box. This adds each of the data fields from each of the tables to
the results of the query.
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8. Step 4: Save and run the query and view the results. Click the save icon, and name the query.
Then click the run icon
to run the query.
Step 5: Export the results from Access into Excel.
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9. Step 6: Use the Unmatched query wizard to find titles that did not match.
In Access, click on the “Create” tab, and select Query Wizard icon
and the “find
unmatched query wizard” option, which will prompt you the 5 steps to build the query.
Prompt 1:
Prompt 2:
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10. Prompt 3:
Prompt 4:
Prompt 5:
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11. Step 7: Export the results from Access into Excel. The results of the query, named “Ebsco
Business Source Complete Without Matching Proquest ABI/Inform” will appear in the main
screen These title results can then be cut and pasted (up to 65,000 records at a time) into Excel.
Run an additional “find unmatched” query with the query wizard, this time selecting the
Proquest/ABI Inform table at the first prompt, and the Ebsco table second, to obtain all the
Proquest/ABI Inform titles without matching Ebsco Business Source complete titles.
The titles that did not match represent the unique titles in each of the Business ejournal packages,
while the titles that did match represent the overlapping titles.
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