Search

This report summarizes the findings of an international study on information-seeking habits and preferences. With extensive input from hundreds of librarians and OCLC staff, the OCLC Market Research team developed a project and commissioned Harris Interactive Inc. to survey a representative sample of information consumers in an effort to learn more about library use, awareness and use of library electronic resources, the Internet search engine, the library and the librarian, free vs. for-fee information, and the "Library" brand. In June of 2005, over 3,300 responses from information consumers in Australia, Canada, India, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States were collected. The findings indicate that information consumers begin their searches for information with a search engine (Google in the majority of cases), they view libraries as places to borrow print books, but they are unaware of the rich electronic content they can access through libraries. Even though information consumers make limited use of these resources, they continue to trust libraries as reliable sources of information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]