ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

Fast Facts

Gary Pattillo

Women outpace men in American doctorates

For the first time, more American women than American men earned doctorates at U.S. universities in 2002. Women account for 51 percent of American Ph.D.s. The total number of doctorates awarded is on the decline, with 39,955 awarded in the 2001-2002 academic year; this is the lowest number since 1993- Including international students in the total, women earned 45 percent of all doctorates granted in the United States. Men still outpace women in the physical sciences and engineering, earning 73 percent and 82 percent of the doctorates in those fields, respectively.

T. B. Hoffer, et at, "Doctorate Recipients from United States Universities: Summary Report 2002," Chicago: National Opinion Research Center, www.norc.org/issues/sed-2002.pdf. December 5, 2003

Open access journals

The full texts of nearly 600 journals are accessible via the online Directory of Open Access Journals. The service “covers free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals.” The number of journals linked to the browsable and searchable directory continues to grow, so a “new titles” list is continually updated. Lund University Libraries Head Office hosts the directory.

Directory of Open Access Journals, www.doaj.org/. December 1,2003

Technology elite

Sixty-nine percent of Americans are not part of the “technology elite.” According to a study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, only 31 percent of the American population are high-end adopters of information and technology goods. “Young Tech Elites,” averaging 22 years of age, are the heaviest users of newly emerging technologies.

John B. Horrigan, "Consumption of Information Goods and Services in the United States." Washington, D.C.: Pew Internet & American Life Project, www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=103. November 23, 2003

Student engagement

Eighty-seven percent of American college students are happy with their college experience, rating it “good” or “excellent.” Unfortunately, 87 percent also report that their classmates sometimes copy information from the Web into papers without citing the source. Over two-fifths of all students earn mostly A’s while only three percent have a C grade average or lower. More than one-third of college seniors report only occasionally receiving prompt feedback from faculty members.

National Survey of Student Engagement: 2003 Annual Report, www.iub.edu/~nsse/2003_annual_report/. December 1,2003

Internet moving image archive

The moving images collections at the Internet Archive include almost 2,000 movie files of advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur films made from 1927 through the present. This collection is made freely accessible to the public via the Internet and also includes hundreds of episodes of selected television and animation series. The Internet Archive also archives text and Web pages. Its “Wayback Machine” contains over 300 terabytes of data and is currently growing at a rate of 12 terabytes per month.

Internet Archive: Moving Image Archive, www.archive.org/movies/movies.php. December 1,2003

Gary Pattillo is reference librarian at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, e-mail:pattillo@refstaff.lib.unc.edu