----------(1)
Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2000 08:05:52 -0600
From: Peter Picerno <ppicerno@mail.astate.edu>
Subject: Re: Comparisons of database titles and full text availability
            (Joan Cohen)

Please post your replies (or the results of your replies) to the list as
this would be valuable information for us all, I believe.

Peter Picerno

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2000 20:59:09 -0500
From: Joan Cohen <jgcohen@bergen.cc.nj.us>
Subject: Comparisons of database titles and full text availability

Has any school or consortium compared the title lists of Proquest, Academic
Index, EBSCOHOST and any other general databases to see what titles are
covered by each and full text availability.  The VALE consortium in New
Jersey is trying to assess whether to continue with Proquest, or move to
another one of the general databases.  If anyone has done such a comparison
please contact me at jgcohen@bergen.cc.nj.us.  Thank you for any help.

Joan Cohen
Reference/Serials Librarian

Bergen Community College Library        Tel:  (201) 447-7984
400 Paramus Road                        Fax:  (201) 444-7036
Paramus, NJ 07652                       Email:  jgcohen@bergen.cc.nj.us

----------(2)
Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2000 11:08:26 -0500
From: Susan E. Sturgeon <ssturgeo@SALEMSTATE.EDU>
Subject: Re: Comparisons of database titles and full text availability
            (Joan Cohen)

Have you looked into Jake as an answer to your question?  I'm not
certain that it does exactly what you want, but I suspect it
may.  This is the Yale product.

SUSAN STURGEON
SERIALS DEPARTMENT
SALEM STATE COLLEGE LIBRARY
352 LAFAYETTE ST.
SALEM MA 01970
NEW E-mail address:susan.sturgeon@salem.mass.edu

----------(3)
Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2000 09:26:23 -0700
From: Dan Lester <dan@riverofdata.com>
Subject: Re: Comparisons of database titles and full text availability
            (Joan Cohen)

Wednesday, November 01, 2000, 6:48:37 AM, you wrote:

Has any school or consortium compared the title lists of Proquest,
Academic Index, EBSCOHOST and any other general databases to see what
titles are covered by each and full text availability.
----

It is easy to do your own comparison of any databases by using jake.
http://jake.med.yale.edu  Also, the comparison would vary, depending
on which products you're comparing from each of the vendors you
mention.  Each of them has several that might be considered general.

To do the comparison, download the list from jake for the ones you
want to compare, then toss into a spreadsheet or database and run
whatever comparisons you wish.  You'll find that each database will
have some things the other doesn't, and that there is no simple
answer, unless you simply count up number of titles in a given format.

dan

--
Dan Lester, Data Wrangler  dan@RiverOfData.com
3577 East Pecan, Boise, Idaho  83716-7115 USA
www.riverofdata.com  www.postcard.org  www.gailndan.com