Portico Services & Benefits > Evaluating Your Preservation Options > Compare Library Holdings

Compare Library Holdings

Perform a Holdings Comparison at no cost

To assist librarians in making decisions about maintaining print holdings of e-journal content being preserved in Portico, we offer a Holdings Comparison service offered at no cost to participating and non-participating libraries. A Holdings Comparison also lets librarians:

  • Actively manage the preservation status of their collection
  • Compare costs to other preservations solutions
  • Inform a decision about joining Portico

Step 1: Submit your list of ISSNs

In order to compare your library’s journal holdings to the content in the Portico archive, we will need a list of the ISSNs associated with the titles that you hold.

This list of ISSNs may be provided to us in either of these two formats:

Submission File as Text
Text ISSN List

A text file with one ISSN per line

Submission File as Excel
Excel Title List

An Excel spreadsheet with ISSNs as a column

It is acceptable to supply us with an Excel spreadsheet that contains additional columns of data other than those listed in the samples above. When you are ready to initiate a holdings comparison, these title listings can be sent as an attachment to participation@portico.org or submitted through the Compare Holdings Form page.

The ISSN may be formatted in any of the following ways:

  • ISSN 0123-456X
  • 0123-456X
  • 0123456X

Step 2: Perform Comparison

Portico will perform the comparison and return to you an Excel spreadsheet explaining the status of each provided ISSN and containing the following information:

Information Description
Library Columns Columns provided in the original submission file
Portico Status Whether or not the title is committed to the archive with three possible status levels:

  • Not Committed: this title has not been committed to the Portico archive at this time
  • Queued: this title has been committed to the archive and is in queue to be ingested
  • Preserved: this title is committed to the archive and we are actively ingesting and preserving it
Portico P-ISSN Print ISSN Portico has for this title
Portico E-ISSN E-ISSN Portico has for this title
Portico Title Title that Portico has for this match
Portico Publisher Publisher who is providing content to Portico
Portico Post-Cancellation Access Whether the publisher has designated Portico as a post-cancellation access mechanism
Portico Holdings List of issues for this journal that are preserved in the Portico Archive at this moment (note that more content may be in queue)
Portico Years Time frame of the content for this journal that is in the Portico Archive (note that more content may be in queue)

Step 3: Share Findings

An email containing your updated spreadsheet will be emailed to you.

If you have any other questions, please contact us.

The Portico digital preservation service is part of ITHAKA, a not-for-profit organization helping the academic community use
digital technologies to preserve the scholarly record and to advance research and teaching in sustainable ways.