C&RL News February 2015  108

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

Teens are fans of print books
“Despite teens’ tech-savvy reputation, this group continues to lag behind adults 
when it comes to reading e-books, even with the young adult genre’s digital 
growth relative to the total e-book market. While 20 percent of teens (purchase) 
e-books, 25 percent of 30-44 year olds and 23 percent of 18-29 year olds buy 
digital copies. While younger readers are open to e-books as a format, teens 
continue to express a preference for print that may seem to be at odds with 
their perceived digital know-how.”
The Nielsen Company, “Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover: Tech-Savvy Teens Remain Fans of Print Books,” December 9, 
2014, www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2014/dont-judge-a-book-by-its-cover-tech-savvy-teens-remain-fans-of-
print-books.html (retrieved January 5, 2015).

Workers and online technology
American workers of all types value email and the Internet as tools for their jobs. 
Six in ten (61 percent) of working Internet users said email is very important 
to doing their job. 54 percent said the larger Internet is very important to doing 
their job. Only 4 percent found social networking sites very important for their 
jobs. “Just 7 percent of (adult employed Internet users) feel their productivity 
has dropped because of the internet, email, and cell phones, while 46 percent 
feel more productive.”
Kristen Purcell and Lee Rainie, “Technology’s Impact on Workers,” Pew Research Center, December 30, 2014, www.
pewInternet.org/2014/12/30/technologys-impact-on-workers (retrieved January 5, 2015).

arXiv hits 1 million submissions
arXiv is an open-access resource that allows scientists to share research before 
it is formally published. It is supported by a global collective of nearly 200 
institutional members in 24 countries. It now contains more than one million 
papers. In 2013 alone, there were nearly 90 million downloads and more than 
97,000 new submissions. 2014 saw 91.2 million downloads.
Gwen Glazer, “arXiv Hits 1 Million Submissions,” Cornell University Library, 
January 12, 2015, www.library.cornell.edu/about/news/press-releases/arxiv-hits-1-million-submissions-0 (retrieved January 13, 
2015).

Willingness to discuss political issues online
In 2013, Edward Snowden revealed widespread government surveillance of 
Americans’ phone and email records. The results of a new survey show “people 
were less willing to discuss the Snowden-NSA story in social media than they 
were in person. 86 percent of Americans were willing to have an in-person 
conversation about the surveillance program, but just 42 percent of Facebook 
and Twitter users were willing to post about it on those platforms. Of the 14 
percent of Americans unwilling to discuss the Snowden-NSA story in person 
with others, only 0.3 percent (was) willing to post about it on social media.”
Keith N. Hampton, Lee Rainie, Weixu Lu, Maria Dwyer, Inyoung Shin, and Kristen Purcell, “Social Media and the ‘Spiral 
of Silence.’” August 26, 2014, Pew Research Center, Washington, DC., www.pewinternet.org/2014/08/26/social-media-
and-the-spiral-of-silence (retrieved December 1, 2014).