C&RL News May 2017 288 Gary Pattillo is reference librarian at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, e-mail: pattillo@ email.unc.edu Libraries and learning outcomes A recent study at a large, public, research-extensive university “suggest(s) that first-year students who used a library resource at least once were significantly more likely than their peers who did not use the library to report development of critical thinking and analytical skills, written communication skills, and read- ing comprehension skills.” Krista M. Soria, Kate Peterson, Jan Fransen, Shane Nackerud, and Association of Research Libraries, “Impact of Academic Library Resources on First-Year Students’ Learning Outcomes (RLI 290, 2017),” March 14, 2017, http://publications.arl. org/rli290/5 (retrieved April 6, 2017). UK book sales Nielsen’s annual Books & Consumers survey reported that UK consumers spent 6 percent more on books in 2016 than in the previous year. The rise was driven by print book sales, while e-book sales declined 4 percent. This was the second consecutive year e-book sales declined in the UK. In addition, there was a 4 percent rise in book volume purchases through physical stores versus online sales, which remained flat. Nielsen Bookscan UK, “Boom Time for the Book Industry: UK Consumers Increase Spending on Books by Six per Cent,” March 13, 2017, www.nielsenbookscan.co.uk/press.php?release_id=149 (retrieved April 6, 2017). News article diffusion News publishers are increasingly posting articles designed to sit natively on social media platforms rather than to drive traffic back to their own websites. Those social media platforms are constantly changing. The content may reside solely on Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr, or some combination of these and other distribution platforms. Pete Brown, “Platforms and publishers: No sign of retreat,” February 23, 2017, The Platforms and Publishers project at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, www.cjr.org/tow_center/platforms-and-publishers-no-sign-of-retreat.php (retrieved March 7, 2017). Web archiving and digital stewardship The National Digital Stewardship Alliance reports that 76 percent of its 84-mem- ber organizations are devoting less than the equivalent of one full-time em- ployee’s time to web archiving. More archiving programs, however, are moving from pilot to production phases, and there is an increased perception of progress among members over the past two years. National Digital Stewardship Alliance-Digital Library Federation, “2016 NDSA Web Archiving Survey Report Is Now Avail- able,” March 14, 2017, http://ndsa.diglib.org//2017/03/14/2016-ndsa-web-archiving-survey-report-is-now-available. html (retrieved April 6, 2017). Reproducible experimental results “More than 70 percent of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce an- other scientist’s experiments, and more than half have failed to reproduce their own experiments. Although 52 percent of those surveyed agree that there is a significant ‘crisis’ of reproducibility, less than 31 percent think that failure to reproduce published results means that the result is probably wrong, and most say that they still trust the published literature.” Monya Baker, “1,500 Scientists Lift the Lid on Reproducibility,” Nature News 533, no. 7604 (May 26, 2016): 452, https:// doi.org/10.1038/533452a (retrieved April 6, 2017). mailto:pattillo%40email.unc.edu?subject=Gary%20Pattillo mailto:pattillo%40email.unc.edu?subject=Gary%20Pattillo http://publications.arl.org/rli290/5 http://publications.arl.org/rli290/5 http://www.nielsenbookscan.co.uk/press.php?release_id=149 http://www.cjr.org/tow_center/platforms-and-publishers-no-sign-of-retreat.php http://ndsa.diglib.org//2017/03/14/2016-ndsa-web-archiving-survey-report-is-now-available.html http://ndsa.diglib.org//2017/03/14/2016-ndsa-web-archiving-survey-report-is-now-available.html https://doi.org/10.1038/533452a https://doi.org/10.1038/533452a