College & Research Libraries News vol. 79, no. 4 (April 2018) C&RL News April 2018 212 Gary Pattillo is reference librarian at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, e-mail: pattillo@ email.unc.edu Music format sales The surge in music streaming continued throughout 2017. Overall consumption of albums, songs, and audio on-demand streaming grew 12.5 percent year over year. A 59 percent increase in on-demand audio streams offset track and album sales declines. Other formats include 14.3 million vinyl LPs sold in 2017 (up 9 percent from 2016, marking vinyl’s 12th consecutive year of sales growth), 88.2 million CDs sold (a decrease of 20 percent from 2016), and 174,000 cassette tapes (the largest sales for the format since 2012). Nielsen Music, 2017 year-end music report: U.S., January 3, 2018, www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/reports/2018/2017-music -us-year-end-report.html (retrieved March 6, 2018). Open Educational Resources The number of faculty members at two- and four-year institutions using open educational resources (OER) as textbooks has risen in the last year—from 5 percent (2015–16) to 9 percent (2016–17). “Faculty report that their required textbooks have an average price of $97, and only 22 percent say that they are ‘Very satisfied’ with that cost.” Only one third say, “90 percent or more of their students have purchased the required textbook. The rate of adoption of OpenStax textbooks among faculty teaching large enrollment courses is now at 16.5 percent, a rate that rivals most commercial textbooks. This is a substantial increase over the rate observed last year (10.8 percent).” Julia E. Seaman and Jeff Seaman, “Opening the Textbook: Open Education Resources in U.S. Higher Education, 2017,” Babson Survey Research Group, https://www.onlinelearningsurvey.com/oer.html (retrieved January 9, 2018). English proficiency index According to the seventh edition of the Education First English Proficiency Index, which measures adult English proficiency among non-native speakers, the five countries with the highest English proficiency are Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Singa- pore. Worldwide, women’s English proficiency is higher than that of men on average. The index ranks 80 countries and territories based on test data from more than 1 million adults who took the EF Standard English Test (EF SET) in 2016. EF English Proficiency Index, 7th edition, Education First, 2017, https://www.ef.edu/epi (retrieved March 6, 2018). The Old Farmer’s Almanac “The Old Farmer’s Almanac, founded in 1792, is among the longest-running con- tinuously published periodicals in the United States.” It prints and distributes about 3 million copies per year. “The earliest American almanacs were pamphlets that ran under 50 pages, but today, they run 200–300 pages.” Marin Cogan, “The Surprising Success of America’s Oldest Living Magazine,” Topic, Issue No. 07, January 2018, https://www. topic.com/the-surprising-success-of-america-s-oldest-living-magazine (retrieved March 6, 2018). Educational attainment Between 2006 and 2016, the percentage of the adult population 25 years of age and over who had completed at least high school rose from 85 percent to 89 percent, and the percentage of adults with a bachelor’s or higher degree increased from 28 percent to 33 percent. Among those age 25 and over who were employed, 39 percent had a bachelor’s or higher degree in 2016 and about half (51 percent) had an associate’s or higher degree. The percentage of young adults (25- to 29-year-olds) who had completed at least high school increased from 86 percent in 2006 to 92 percent in 2016. Thomas D. Snyder, Cristobal de Brey, and Sally A. Dillow, Digest of Education Statistics 2016 (NCES 2017-094), February 2018, National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, Washington, D.C., https:// nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2017094 (retrieved March 6, 2018). mailto:pattillo%40email.unc.edu?subject=Gary%20Pattillo mailto:pattillo%40email.unc.edu?subject=Gary%20Pattillo http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/reports/2018/2017-music-us-year-end-report.html http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/reports/2018/2017-music-us-year-end-report.html https://www.onlinelearningsurvey.com/oer.html https://www.ef.edu/epi https://www.topic.com/the-surprising-success-of-america-s-oldest-living-magazine https://www.topic.com/the-surprising-success-of-america-s-oldest-living-magazine https://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2017094 https://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2017094