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C&RL News April 2017  232

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

Faculty evaluation of academic libraries
“When asked about the quality of help on reference questions, nearly a third 
of survey participants say that they are highly satisfied and 31 percent say that 
they are satisfied,” according to an international survey of research university 
faculty asked to evaluate academic libraries. “Tenured survey participants vis-
ited the library 2.7 times in the past month while untenured (not on a tenure 
track) participants visited 1.91 times and those on a tenure track visited 2.21 
times. Participants with four or more annual classes taught visited the library 
3.63 times in the past month, compared with 1.86 times among those teaching 
two classes and 1.34 times among those with no classes at all.”
Primary Research Group, “International Survey of Research University Faculty: Evaluation of the Academic Library, ISBN 
978-157440-432-6,” www.primaryresearch.com/Newsletter.aspx?ID=53 (retrieved January 10, 2017).

Interlibrary loan
Of the more than 10,000 libraries using OCLC resource sharing services in 2016, 
more than 7,300 of them requested at least one item using interlibrary loan 
while 7,500 libraries loaned at least one item. An interlibrary loan request was 
filled every 18 seconds. More than 1 million articles were shared online using 
OCLC’s Article Exchange.
Christa Starck, “Looking at interlibrary loan, 2016 edition,” February 15, 2017, OCLC Next, www.oclc.org/blog/main 
/looking-at-interlibrary-loan-2016-edition (retrieved March 8, 2017).

Google featured snippets
Google processes billions of queries per day. For about 15 to 20 percent of 
searches, Google may show a search result in a special featured snippet block 
at the top of the search results page. The feature is an automatic and algorithmic 
match to the search query, and the content comes from third-party sites. Most of 
the time, the answers are factually correct, but sometimes these snippets are very 
wrong. Any particular snippet answer to a question can also change relatively 
rapidly. This illustrates the need for increased information literacy among users.
Adrianne Jeffries, “Google’s featured snippets are worse than fake news,” March 5, 2017, The Outline, https://theoutline.
com/post/1192/google-s-featured-snippets-are-worse-than-fake-news (retrieved March 8, 2017).

State need-based grant aid for public university students
The “cost of attendance” at public research universities is estimated by deduct-
ing tuition waivers, discounts, and financial aid from total tuition and room and 
board costs. “States’ average annual cost of attendance for low income students 
across all of their public universities ranged from $6,818 to $15,873 in 2014. Cali-
fornia, Wyoming, and New Jersey now spend more than $4,000 per low-income 
student, more than the federal expenditure on Pell Grants for their state. More 
than 30 states, however, spend less than 25 percent of the federal Pell Grant 
expenditure. Eight states lack any meaningful need-based grant aid program.”
Charlie Eaton, Sheisha Kulkarni, Robert Birgeneau, Henry Brady, and Michael Hout, “Affording the dream: Student debt 
and state need-based grant aid for public university students,” Research & Occasional Paper Series: CSHE.4.17, Draft 
2.23.2017 February 2017, Center for Studies in Higher Education, University of California-Berkeley, www.cshe.berkeley.
edu/publications/affording-dream-student-debt-and-state-need-based-grant-aid-public-university-students (retrieved 
March 7, 2017).