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C&RL News March 2011  196

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

Digital forensics for cultural heritage
Digital forensics is now being used in cultural heritage collections. The Council 
on Library and Information Resources explains, “while the purview of digital 
forensics was once specialized to fields of law enforcement, computer secu-
rity, and national defense, the increasing ubiquity of computers and electronic 
devices means that digital forensics is now used in a wide variety of cases and 
circumstances. Most records today are born digital, and libraries and other col-
lecting institutions increasingly receive computer storage media as part of their 
acquisition of ‘papers’ from writers, scholars, scientists, musicians, and public 
figures. The same forensics software that indexes a criminal suspect’s hard drive 
allows the archivist to prepare a comprehensive manifest of the electronic files 
a donor has turned over for accession.”
Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, Richard Ovenden, and Gabriela Redwine, with research assistance from 
Rachel Donahue, Digital Forensics and Born-Digital Content in Cultural Heritage Collections, CLIR pub 
149; Council on Library and Information Resources, December 2010, www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub149 
/pub149.pdf (retrieved January 13, 2011).

Library use during the recession
During the current economic recession, consumer spending on books, CDs, 
and DVDs has decreased 76 percent, while library users have increased bor-
rowing of those same items by 75 percent. More than one third (37 percent) 
of economically impacted library users are using the library more often than 
they did before the economic downturn. Americans not economically impacted 
use the library more, too. Sixteen percent say they use the library more often.
Brad Gauder, editor, “Perceptions of Libraries, 2010: Context and Community,” OCLC, www.oclc.org/reports 
/2010perceptions/2010perceptions_all.pdf (retrieved February 1, 2011).

Book market
In 2010, Americans bought well over 751 million books. That is near the all-
time high (in 2009) of more than 777 million books. In 2008, there were more 
original book titles published in print than ever before: 289,729 different titles 
in the United States alone. Even as sales of e-books rise, they represent only 8 
percent to 10 percent of the total book market.
“The State of Publishing,” McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, www.mcsweeneys.net/2011/2/7publishing.html (retrieved 
February 7, 2011).

IP addresses
In February, the Number Resource Organization, the group responsible for 
managing the distribution of Internet addresses, distributed the final allocation 
of free Internet addresses available from the current pool used for most of the 
Internet’s history. There are 4.3 billion numerical Internet addresses under the 
old scheme. The new system (IPv6) provides for 340 undecillion addresses. That 
is a billion-trillion times larger than the total pool of previous IPv4 addresses.  
Experts do not anticipate running out of addresses any time soon.
“Available Pool of Unallocated IPv4 Internet Addresses Now Completely Emptied,” The Internet Corporation for Assigned 
Names and Numbers, www.icann.org/en/news/releases/release-03feb11-en.pdf (retrieved February 3, 2011).