End-User Update: 2009 Overview

This report is tailored for publishers and information providers, and presents findings from Outsell’s latest wave of research on information users, conducted in December 2008, which garnered 5,660 responses from the corporate, education, government, and healthcare sectors in the US and UK. This is the latest in Outsell’s regular surveys of knowledge workers, investigating what they spend for various types of information, what information they use in their jobs or studies, where they go to get that information, how they like to receive it, and other attributes that are important to publishers and information providers. Outsell has surveyed tens of thousands of knowledge workers since 1998, and this report draws on that history of deep research. In upcoming reports, we will delve into our latest data to provide reports on various user segments. This report contains:

- Overall trends in user needs, preferences, and habits;
- Outsell data on most-used information types by sector and preferred format (electronic or print);
- Trends in preferred methods for obtaining information since 2001;
- Data on time spent on information tasks, and primary obstacles to finding information, from 2005 to 2008;
- Data on handheld device use;
- Analysis of users as buyers, and users and libraries;
- Essential actions for publishers and information providers who want to keep up with knowledge workers’ changing information profiles.