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C&RL News November 2012  636

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

G a r y  P a t t i l l o

Decaying Web content
Researchers from Old Dominion University studied how many resources shared 
in social media are still available on the live Web or in public Web archives. 
By analyzing six different event-centric datasets of resources shared in social 
media from June 2009 to March 2012, they found about 11 percent had been 
lost and only 20 percent archived after just one year. After two and a half years, 
the numbers increased to 27 percent lost and 41 percent archived.
Hany M. SalahEldeen and Michael L. Nelson, “Losing My Revolution: How Many Resources Shared on Social Media Have 
Been Lost?” arXiv.org [cs.DL], http://arxiv.org/pdf/1209.3026v1 (retrieved October 1, 2012).

WorldCat records
As of October 8, 2012, OCLC WorldCat contains 283,557,027 records and indi-
cates 1,898,030,534 holdings.
“WorldCat update,” OCLC Abstracts, vol. 15, no. 41, www.oclc.org/content/emailcontent/en/abstracts/abstracts-100812.
html (Retrieved October 8, 2012).

Interesting govdoc titles
A recent list of oddly sounding government document titles includes:
“Hills Bros. coffee can chronology: field guide”
“Identifying sheep killed by bears”
“Who are the zombie masters, and what do they want?”
“The relation of barium to the loco-weed disease”
“Let’s use TV!”
Daniel Cornwall, “Best titles ever!” Free Government Information, July 13, 2006, http://freegovinfo.info/best (retrieved 
October 8, 2012).

Postsecondary employment
As of fall 2011, approximately 3.9 million individuals were employed in Title 
IV institutions and administrative offices. Of those 3.9 million, about 2.5 million 
were reported to be employed full-time and about 1.4 million were reported 
to be employed part-time.
L. G. Knapp, J. E. Kelly-Reid, and S. A. Ginder, “Employees in Postsecondary Institutions, Fall 2011 and Student Financial 
Aid, Academic Year 2010-11: First Look (Provisional Data) (NCES 2012-156rev),” U.S. Department of Education, Wash-
ington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics, http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2012156rev 
(retrieved October 1, 2012).

Smartphones
Forty-five percent of American adults own smartphones; 66 percent of Americans 
ages 18 to 29 own smartphones; and 68 percent of those living in households 
earning $75,000 or more also own them.
Lee Rainie, “Smartphone Ownership Update: September 2012,” September 11, 2012, Pew Internet & American Life Project,
http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Smartphone-Update-Sept-2012.aspx (retrieved September 11, 2012).