C&RL News June 2020 312 Gary Pattillo is reference librarian at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, e-mail: pattillo@ email.unc.edu Streaming during the COVID-19 pandemic “Americans (over the age of 2) streamed 85 percent more minutes of video in March 2020 compared to March 2019, according to a new report from Nielsen. In total, Americans streamed 156 billion minutes of television during the last week of March, compared to 115 billion during the last week of February. Binge viewing, according to Hulu, which is defined as watching 3+ episodes in the same session,” grew more than 25 percent in the first two weeks of March versus the last two weeks of February. Sara Fischer, “Streaming Spikes during Coronavirus,” Axios, April 1, 2020, https://www.axios.com/streaming-spikes -during-coronavirus-c37a9cb2-8e14-4481-95f7-62ac1fa0222d.html (retrieved May 1, 2020). Course credits and GPA “Based on the subset of students with complete transcripts or enrollment data, 2011–12 beginning post-secondary students attempted an average of 24 undergraduate credits and earned an average of 20 undergraduate credits and a 2.5 GPA during their first year in postsecondary education. By June 2017, about 6 years after post-secondary entry, they had attempted an average of 88 undergraduate credits and earned an average of 78 undergraduate credits and a 2.6 GPA.” Forty-two percent of the students had taken some remedial courses during their enrollment. Xianglei Chen, Lesa Caves, Joshua Pretlow, Samuel Austin Caperton, Michael Bryan, and Darryl Cooney, “Courses Taken, Credits Earned, and Time to Degree: A First Look at the Postsecondary Transcripts of 2011–12 Beginning Postsecondary Students (NCES 2020-501),” U.S. Department of Education. Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics, https://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2020501 (retrieved May 4, 2020). Podcasts The top three podcast publishers as of March 2020 are NPR, iHeartRadio, and New York Times, accounting for 61,718,000 monthly listeners in the United States and 549,689,000 global downloads and streams monthly. Podtrac, Inc., “Top Podcast Publishers—US Audience: March 2020,” http://analytics.podtrac.com/podcast-publisher -rankings (retrieved May 5, 2020). Educational institutions In 2017, there were 98,158 public K-12 schools and 32,461 private K-12 schools in the United States. There were 2,407 four-year colleges. Of those, 711 were public institutions and 1,301 were private-nonprofit institutions. The remainder were private for-profit institutions. U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, “Digest of Education Statistics, 2018 (NCES 2020-009),” https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d18/ch_2.asp (retrieved May 5, 2020), and U.S. Department of Educa- tion, National Center for Education Statistics, “The Condition of Education - Postsecondary Education - Postsecondary Institutions - Characteristics of Degree-Granting Postsecondary Institutions - Indicator May (2019),” https://nces.ed.gov /programs/coe/indicator_csa.asp (retrieved May 5, 2020). Facebook “With over 2.6 billion monthly active users as of the first quarter of 2020, Facebook is the biggest social network worldwide. During the last reported quarter, the company stated that almost 3 billion people were using at least one of the company’s core products (Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, or Mes- senger) each month.” J. Clement, “Facebook Users Worldwide 2019,” Statista, https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of -monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide (retrieved May 5, 2020). mailto:pattillo%40email.unc.edu?subject=Gary%20Pattillo mailto:pattillo%40email.unc.edu?subject=Gary%20Pattillo https://www.axios.com/streaming-spikes -during-coronavirus-c37a9cb2-8e14-4481-95f7-62ac1fa0222d.html https://www.axios.com/streaming-spikes -during-coronavirus-c37a9cb2-8e14-4481-95f7-62ac1fa0222d.html https://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2020501 http://analytics.podtrac.com/podcast-publisher-rankings http://analytics.podtrac.com/podcast-publisher-rankings https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d18/ch_2.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_csa.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_csa.asp https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of -monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of -monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide