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WorldCat Collection Analysis for Public Libraries
Quick Reference

Accessing Collection Analysis

Access to the WorldCat® Collection Analysis™ service is via the OCLC FirstSearch® service.

  Action
1

Display the OCLC FirstSearch logon screen at: http:\\www.firstsearch.oclc.org.

2 Enter the Authorization and Password associated with WorldCat Collection Analysis and select Start.
3 When the FirstSearch screen appears, select the Collection Analysis tab.

Subscription Type

A library subscribes to the WorldCat Collection Analysis service as an individual institution. At logon, under Basic Analyses, you should see My Library and WorldCat Comparison. You may also see the Usage Analysis area if your library subscribes to WorldCat Resource Sharing and Authoritative Lists.

Analysis Dimensions

OCLC Conspectus

The OCLC® Conspectus is a subject hierarchy consisting of divisions, categories, and subject descriptors. The Conspectus can be used with Dewey® Decimal, Library of Congress and National Library of Medicine classifications. The three levels of the OCLC Conspectus, broadest to most specific, are:

  • Division
  • Category
  • Subject

Publication Date

Dates are grouped into these ranges:

Pre-1500 1900-1909 1960-1969 2002 2008
1500-1599 1910-1919 1970-1979 2003 2009
1600-1699 1920-1929 1980-1989 2004 Other
1700-1799 1930-1939 1990-1999 2005  
1800-1850 1940-1949 2000 2006  
1850-1899 1950-1959 2001 2007  

Language

Sixty-eight languages from the MARC Code List for Languages can appear as analysis results. The remaining languages are grouped under Other.

Afrikaans Danish Indonesian Norwegian Tagalog
Albanian Dutch Irish Ottoman Turkish Tamil
Arabic English Italian Panjabi Telugu
Armenian Estonian Japanese Persuab Thai
Azerbaijani Finnish Kannada Polish Tibetan
Belarusian French Kazakh Portuguese Turkish
Bengali Georgian Korean Romanian Ukrainian
Bosnian German Kurdish Russian Urdu
Bulgarian Greek, Modern
(1453- )		 Kyrgyz Sanskrit Uzbek
Burmese Gujarati Latin Serbian Vietnamese
Catalan Hebrew Lithuanian Slovak Yiddish
Chinese Hindi Macedonian Slovenian Other
Croatian Hungarian Malay Spanish  
Czech Icelandic Marathi Swedish  

Note: Only the languages actually contained in a collection appear on the Analysis Results and Limit Analysis screens.

Format

The WorldCat Collection Analysis service uses these material types:

Archival Materials Continually Updated Resources, Electronic Serial Publications, Electronic
Archival Materials, Electronic Continually Updated Resources, Microform Serial Publications, Microform
Archival Materials, Microform Maps Sound Recordings
Articles Maps, Electronic Sound Recordings, Electronic
Articles, Electronic Maps, Microform Sound Recordings, Microform
Articles, Microform Musical Scores Texts, Electronic
Books Musical Scores, Electronic Visual Materials
Books, Microform Musical Scores, Microform Visual Materials, Electronic
Computer Files Serial Publications Visual Materials, Microform
Continually Updated Resources    

Borrower/Lender

For ILL Analyses a library is identified as either the Borrower or the Lender

Holding Status

For ILL Analyses, this dimension shows how many borrowing requests were submitted for items not owned by your library.

Holding Count

For selected analyses, results may be displayed according to the number of libraries that hold a given title.

Shared By

For WorldCat Comparisons, this dimension shows how widely your library's items are held within WorldCat, that is, whether an item is held uniquely by your library or held by you and one, two, three (and so on) other libraries.

Request Date

For ILL Analyses, this dimension shows the total number of items requested (Borrower) or shipped (Lender). You can view data by annual or quarterly totals.

Request Frequency

For ILL Analyses, this dimension shows how often a request was submitted (Borrower) or shipped (Lender). You can view aggregate or annual totals.

Request Cost

For ILL Analyses, this dimension shows how much your library paid (in ranges of U.S. dollars) for items you borrowed.

Copy vs Loan

For ILL Analyses, this dimension shows how many borrowing requests were submitted for items that the library expects back (such as books or videos) versus items that it does not expect to be returned (such as photocopies).

Types of Analyses

The WorldCat Collection Analysis service provides four types of collection analysis.

Individual Library Analysis.  This analysis presents your library's holdings according to the selected analysis dimensions.

ILL Analyses.  This analysis presents your library's borrowing and lending activity within WorldCat Resource Sharing.

Circulation Analysis. This analysis shows how your library’s collection is used within your local community. Data from your library must be sent to OCLC to activate this analysis.

Authoritative List Comparison. This analysis presents your library’s holdings compared to an authoritative collection development list.

Uniqueness

The Uniqueness view of the WorldCat analysis shows how broadly a given title is shared among the members of a group, that is, how many of a library's titles are:

  • held by it alone
  • held by one other library (Shared by 2)
  • held by two other libraries (Shared by 3)

and so on.

For an Authoritative List Comparison, uniqueness shows how many of the Authoritative List titles are not held by your library.

Collection Analysis Screens

Data to Analyze

The Data to Analyze screen lists all of the analyses available to your library.

Analysis Results

The Analysis Results screen presents the results of an analysis in a spreadsheet-style table. Information viewed on this screen includes:

My Library. This analysis presents your library’s holdings – and only your library’s holdings – according to your selected analysis dimensions..

WorldCat Comparison. This analysis compares your library’s holdings to all of WorldCat, according to your selected analysis dimensions. It shows how many of your holdings are unique to your collection and how many are held by other libraries as well.

My Library as Borrower. This analysis presents all WorldCat Resource Sharing requests submitted by your library, via the staff Workform or the Direct Request Workform.

My Library as Lender. This analysis presents all requested items that are physically or electronically shipped from your library.

Circulation Analysis. This analysis shows how your library’s collection is used within your local community. Data from your library must be sent to OCLC to activate this analysis.

Authoritative List Comparison. This analysis presents your library’s holdings compared to an authoritative collection development list such as Booklist or Publisher’s Weekly.

Graph Display

The Graph View presents the data from a single row as a graph. The default display shows:

  • The Analysis Results column headings as the x-axis
  • The number of titles or holdings as the y-axis
  • The name of the row you selected as the graph title

You can view a graph by selecting the Display Graph Graph icon icon.

Change Analysis

The Change Analysis screen allows you to change the order in which analysis dimensions are applied to an existing analysis. You can:

  • Change the column value
  • Change the order in which analysis dimensions are applied as rows:

Limit Analysis

The Limit Analysis screen allows you to reduce the breadth of an analysis by specifying subsets of one or more analysis dimensions. This enables you to reduce the number of records retrieved and focus information for specific purposes.

You can select subsets of all dimensions. For the OCLC Conspectus, you can select Divisions only; you cannot select down to the level of Category or Subject.

Changing an Analysis

To change column value or row order:

  Action
1

On the Change Analysis screen, open the Data to Analyze field and select the analysis you want to change.

Note: Your current comparisons are listed under ILL Analyses and Authoritative Lists.
2

Select the radio button for the dimension you want to use as the column value.
3 Using the Level lists, select the order in which you want the analysis dimensions to be applied.
4

Select the Run Analysis button.

Result: The analysis is run with the new values and an updated Analysis Results screen is displayed.

Limiting an Analysis

To use a subset of an analysis dimension:

  Action
1

On the Limit Analysis screen, for each dimension check the limit(s) that you want to include in the analysis.

NOTE: The Build Text Index screen appears.

  • To include all limits for a given dimension, select Check All.
  • To clear all limits for a given dimension, select Clear All.
2 Select the Run Analysis button.

Support

OCLC Support staff:
E-mail: support@oclc.org
Telephone: 1-800-848-5800 (USA) or +1-614-793-8682
(7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., U.S. Eastern time, Monday-Friday)

Help

Online Screen Help

Screen-specific help is available from all WorldCat Collection Analysis screens. To access this help, select

the Help Help button icon. A separate window opens displaying a menu of Help topics.

Documentation

User Guide

The WorldCat Collection Analysis User Guide is available as an HTML document on the OCLC Web site at:
http://www.oclc.org/support/documentation/collectionanalysis/using/default.htm>. The navigation area (left column) of this page contains a link to a .pdf version of the Guide.

Ordering printed copies of this document

To order printed copies of this publication at no charge, send an e-mail request to orders@oclc.org. Include the product code REF1123.

You may also use the OCLC Index of Documentation at https://www3.oclc.org/documentation/. If the Order hard copy link is active, you may use it to request printed copies.