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Introduction to OCLC Statistics

There are two places you can access and track your institution's OCLC activity; via OCLC Usage Statistics or via the Online Product Usage Statistics Report (OPUS). Below is a brief description of each and instructions on how to access your statistics from each place.

To view instructions on how to access your cataloging or ILL statistics specifically, click on one of the links below.

OCLC Usage Statistics Web Site

Connexion, WorldCat Resource Sharing (OCLC ILL), FirstSearch and OpenWorldCat statistics are available here. Log on with any OCLC authorization and password and find your usage statistics by navigating between tabs. Within each tab you can choose to view your daily or monthly statistics by institution or by authorization. Monthly reports go back 18 months.

To access your OCLC usage statistics:

Online Product Usage Statistics (OPUS)

In December of 2004, OCLC replaced the Marketing Usage Trends (MUTRs) report that libraries used to receive on a quarterly basis with a new and improved electronic report called OCLC Product Usage Statistics (OPUS).

Available from the OCLC Web site, the OPUS report contains statistics for the current and previous fiscal years, including every product code your institution uses (unlike MUTRs which only covered 128 product codes). The report is available in a Web-viewable format as well as in a tab-delimited downloadable format, so you can plug the data into a spreadsheet application and manipulate the statistics any way you like.

OPUS reports are made available on the 8th of each month by 5:00 p.m. Eastern time. Each month, the previous month's OPUS report will be overwritten, so if you want to archive the data, you will need to print out or download the report. Since the report cumulates information for the fiscal year, the crucial report to save is the one released in July, which will contain data for the full fiscal year.

To access OPUS:

  • Go to the OCLC Product Services Web page
  • Click on "Records and Reports"
  • Under the category, "Reports and Statistics," click on the link for "OCLC Product Usage Statistics"
  • Enter a valid OCLC authorization and password