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C&RL News June 2013  332

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

Ulrich’s update
Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory currently lists 377,595 periodicals, and 131,359 
of those titles are in languages other than English. Since February 2013, the 
number of open access journals listed has increased by 143 to a total of 8,562.
Susan Presley, “Data Update,” Serials Solutions Words blog, April 11, 2013, www.serialssolutions.com/en/words 
/detail/2183 (retrieved May 6, 2013).

Destinations of U.S. study abroad students
The top five destinations of U.S. study abroad students are the United Kingdom, 
Italy, Spain, France, and China. Fourteen of the top 25 destinations are outside 
Europe; these include Australia, Costa Rica, Argentina, India, and South Africa.
Institute of International Education, “International Students in the U.S.,” Fast Facts Open Doors 2012, www.iie.org/~ 
/media/Files/Corporate/Open-Doors/Fast-Facts/Fast%20Facts%202012.ashx (retrieved May 6, 2013).

OED
The Oxford English Dictionary currently contains 272,858 entries (as of May 
7, 2013). It lists about 800,000 senses of words and cites more than 3 million 
quotations.
“Glossary,” Oxford English Dictionary, 2013, http://public.oed.com/how-to-use-the-oed/glossary (retrieved May 7, 2013).

WorldCat
The WorldCat online catalog recently added its 2 billionth holding to its database. 
WorldCat records are created by about 25,000 OCLC member libraries around 
the world. The database contains more than 280 million bibliographic records.
“WorldCat database reaches 2 billion holdings,” OCLC, May 7, 2013, www.oclc.org/en-US/news/releases 
/2013/201322dublin.html (Retrieved May 7, 2013).

Book publishing snapshot
More than 340,000 physical book titles were published in 2011, not including 
e-books. E-books constitute about 20 percent of units sold in the Trade market. 
David Vinjamuri, “The Trouble With Finding Books Online—And A Few Solutions,” Forbes, /www.forbes.com/sites 
/davidvinjamuri/2013/02/27/the-trouble-with-finding-books-online-and-a-few-solutions (retrieved May 16, 2013).
Book Industry Study Group, “Consumer attitudes toward e-book reading,” Vol. 4, Report 1 sample, www.bisg.org/docs 
/ConsumerAttitudes_Volume4Report1_sample.pdf (retrieved May 15, 2013).

Google Timelapse
“Google has expanded its mapping platform to launch a new project called 
Timelapse, taking you back through time to see how our planet has changed 
over the last 25 years.” The project compiles images of Earth taken every year 
between 1984 and 2012, allowing the user to view time-lapse changes of such 
phenomena as glacier retreats, island morphing, and urban sprawl.
Matt Brian, “Google’s Timelapse project shows how the Earth has changed over a quarter of a century,” The Verge, May 
9, 2013, www.theverge.com/2013/5/9/4315018/google-timelapse-shows-earth-though-time (retrieved May 10, 2013).