JISC Academic Database Assessment Tool

JISC Academic Database Assessment Tool (ADAT) allows you to compare bilbiographic and full text databases.  There are sfour main functions on the site:

1. Compare Journal Title Lists
2. Compare key features of database platforms
3. Compare e-Book platforms
4. Compare charts and statistice (dashboards) of each database

So, for example, with respect to number 3, if you compare NetLibrary to ebrary, you will learn that ebrary lets you export citations to Endnote, while NetLibrary will not. However, ebrary allows you to search by LC Subject trees, while Netlibrary does not.  There are more than 70 categories that they compare in the e-Book platform section.  It is a great service when trying to compare usability of different platforms!

Similarly, their comparison of journal titles in databases quickly provide venn diagrams of overlaps in coverage.  For example, of ABI/Informs 3,984 titles, 1,796 also appear in Business Source Premier (which has a total of 12,978) titles.  If you are using an ERM, chances are that your ERM can do this for you as well.  For those of you not using an ERM, this is an very handy collection development aid that mimics some pricey proprietary software.

The site also informs you when the title list for each database was last updated, and lets you set up alerts for when those updates take place. Contributers are a little sparse but the big names of Proquest and Thomson Reuters are both there, along with others.  It would be nice to see this grow - wouldn't it be fun to compare Lexis to Westlaw? (VS)