Title Normalization & Quality Control: Making Excel Work for You and Not the Other Way Around

Abstract

Every year, the Continuing Resources & Database Management Division systematically renews the journal and serial subscriptions for the Library.There are many moving parts resulting in a multi-step, multi-month workflow. This past 2018 renewal season, I streamlined the process in two innovative ways: title normalization and using the IF function in Excel as a quality control step. I began by cleaning the data to normalize the titles. After completing a rigorous vLookUp function, I added a quality control step with an IF function to ensure that the matches were accurate. Because I took the time to standardize and normalize my data at the beginning of this process, I could create a better, more inclusive formula. Ultimately, I did not have to manually check hundreds of titles because I engineered Excel to do it for me. This saved time and money in meeting the needs of the users and researchers here at McKeldin Library.