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

1. Step by step : How to use Microsoft Access to combine cost and usage data for ejournals
Scenario: A library has the cost for each subscribed ejournal, drawn from its ILS reporting
system, and exported into Excel and wants to combine this cost information with the usage data
available as Counter JR1 report, to obtain a cost per download report.
Step 1: Create and export a list of ejournal orders from the library’s ILS or vendor system into an
Excel spreadsheet. For example, create an Excel spreadsheet of economics ejournal subscription
orders. It is important that this report is as complete and “clean” as possible. Since the ISSN will
be the data element used as a matchpoint with the SQL Access query, it is important that the
ISSN number is formatted consistently as NNNN-NNNN.
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2. Step 2: Download the Counter Journal Report 1 for the year, either from the publishers’ web site,
or through a third-party usage consolidation service, and export into an Excel spreadsheet.
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3. Step 3: Import the Excel spreadsheets 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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4. 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 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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5. 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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6. Step 4: 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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7. The SQL 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 element in one table then dragging the cursor to the same data element
(for example, the ISSN) in the other table, Access will create a connection line (the join)
resulting in a SQL query that matches the data element in each table.
The actual SQL query, which can be viewed by changing the
view button to SQL view, is:
SELECT
FROM [Journal_Holdings_Report_(JR1)] INNER JOIN [Economic ejournal orders] ON
[Journal_Holdings_Report_(JR1)].ISSN = [Economic ejournal orders].[ISSN 1];
However, by staying in design view, you have a visual display of the query.
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8. 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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9. Step 5: Run the query and view the results. Click the save icon, and name the query. Then click
the run icon
to run the query.
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10. Step 6: Export the query results into Excel.
The results of the query, which combines the data from the two tables, will appear in the main
screen, or by clicking view icon
, for the data sheet view. These title results can then be cut
and pasted (up to 65,000 records at a time) into Excel. In this example, the ISSN 1 from the
economic ejournal order tables matched to the ISSN from the Counter JR1 report.
An additional query can be run, using the ISSN 2 from the economic ejournal order tables
matched to the ISSN from the Counter JR1 report, and the results exported into Excel.
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11. Once the results are in Excel, you can use Excel’s “Remove duplicates” function to de-dupe the
results by a unique identifier, such as the Bib #.
Step 7: Calculate the cost per download. With the cost and usage data merged into a single Excel
spreadsheet, the formula function in Excel can then be used to calculate the cost per download.
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