Knowledge workers need to find information but even when it is stored on their local computer systems, finding it can be costly. There are many researchers working on solutions to reduce these costs, but there has been little research into exactly what these costs are, and what the ties are between these costs and users' choices between ways to access their local information. This paper provides a methodology for investigating such issues, and reports empirical results on ways of accessing local, task-relevant resources 'e.g. document files', their associated costs, and users' sensitivities to certain kinds of costs. Our results fill in gaps in what has been known about the problem, thereby helping to inform research on solutions to the problem.
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