jan22cover


C&RL News January 2022 46

Gary Pattillo is reference librarian at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, e-mail:  
pattillo@email.unc.edu

Newspaper circulation
“The estimated total U.S. daily newspaper circulation (print and digital combined) in 2020 
was 24.3 million for weekday and 25.8 million for Sunday, each down 6 percent from the 
previous year.” For comparison, the weekday circulation in 1984 was 63.3 million (print).
Pew Research Center, “Trends and Facts on Newspapers | State of the News Media,” Pew 
Research Center ’s Journalism Project (blog), June 29, 2021, https://www.pewresearch.org 
/journalism/fact-sheet/newspapers (retrieved December 2, 2021).

Postsecondary campus safety
While the overall number of reported on-campus crimes fell from 34,100 in 
2009 to 28,500 in 2018, and the rate of crime fell from 23.0 to 19.5 incidents 
per 10,000 FTE students, the number of reported forcible sex offenses on campus 
increased from 2,500 in 2009 to 12,300 in 2018 (a 383 percent increase). “Al-
though changes in the reporting guidelines for forcible sex offenses in 2014 likely 
contributed to the largest single-year percentage increase in that year (36 percent, 
from 5,000 to 6,800), the number of reported forcible sex offenses on campus 
continued to increase steadily between 2014 and 2018, from 6,800 to 12,300.”
Véronique Irwin, Ke Wang, Jiashan Cui, Jizhi Zhang, and Alexandra Thompson, “Report 
on Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2020 (NCES 2021-092/NCJ 300772),” July 2021, 
National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education, and Bureau of 
Justice Statistics, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., 
https://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2021092 (retrieved December 2, 2021).

Text mining index
The General Index is a “gigantic index of the words and short phrases contained in more 
than 100 million journal articles—including many paywalled papers. The catalogue, 
which was released on 7 October and is free to use, holds tables of more than 355 billion 
words and sentence fragments listed next to the articles in which they appear.”
Holly Else, “Giant, Free Index to World’s Research Papers Released Online,” Nature, October 
26, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02895-8 (retrieved November 30, 2021).

WorldCat growth
“In FY21, WorldCat grew beyond 500 million records and 3 billion library 
holdings, a 6.74 percent growth in bibliographic records and a 4.35 percent 
growth in holdings from FY20.”
“OCLC Annual Report 2020-2021,” OCLC, November 12, 2021, https://www.oclc.org/content 
/annual-report/en_us/2021/home.html (retrieved December 1, 2021).

mailto:pattillo%40email.unc.edu?subject=
https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/newspapers
https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/newspapers
https://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2021092
https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02895-8
https://www.oclc.org/content/annual-report/en_us/2021/home.html
https://www.oclc.org/content/annual-report/en_us/2021/home.html