My talk at UKSG where I talk about how I actually solved a series of research information problems: http://river-valley.tv/the-transformation-is-already-here-%E2%80%93-its-just-unevenly-distributed/

Lots of discussion of personal experience but this is necessarily biased. There is a lot of research on how readers actually take in literature, how long they are reading for, and what their purpose has also been, in large part by Carol.

Tenopir, C, Allard S, Douglass K, Aydinoglu A U, Wu L, Manoff M, Read E, Frame M.  2011.  Data Sharing by Scientists: Practices and Perceptions. Public Library of Science (PLoS) ONE. 6(6)

Tenopir, C, Allard S, Bates B, Levine KJ, King DW, Birch B, Mays R, Caldwell C.  2011.  Perceived Value of Scholarly Articles. Learned Publishing. 24:123-132.

Tenopir, C, Mays R, Wu L.  2011.  Journal Article Growth and Reading Patterns. New Review of Information Networking. 16(1):4-22.

Tenopir, C, Wilson CS, Vakkari P, Talja S, King DW.  2010.  Cross country comparison of scholarly e-reading patterns in Australia, Finland and the United States. Australian Academic & Research Libraries (AARL). 41(1):26-41