Institutional ethnography: A sociology for librarianship

Authors

  • Nicole K Dalmer The University of Western Ontario
  • Roz Stooke The University of Western Ontario
  • Pam McKenzie The University of Western Ontario

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29173/lirg747

Keywords:

institutional ethnography, research methods, qualitative research

Abstract

Canadian sociologist Dorothy Smith’s institutional ethnography (IE) is an ontology of the social that conceptualises ‘life as usual’ as the ongoing coordination of people’s actions across diverse sites. Popular in the health sciences and human service professions as a research strategy for understanding and explicating problematics of everyday life, it is slowly gaining traction as a critical research approach for library and information science (LIS). This article introduces IE and provides an overview of its central tenets. It outlines ways in which institutional ethnographers identify research problematics and collect and analyse data. The article concludes with three illustrations of how institutional ethnography has been used to map the linkages among activities and institutional processes, ultimately revealing how it can contribute to a critical understanding of library and information science practices and scholarship.

Author Biographies

Nicole K Dalmer, The University of Western Ontario

Nicole is a fourth year doctoral candidate in the Library and Information Science program at The University of Western Ontario where she researches the intersections of aging, care and information work.

Roz Stooke, The University of Western Ontario

Roz Stooke is a former children’s librarian who teaches in the Faculty of Education at The University of Western Ontario where she promotes IE as a form of critical praxis.

Pam McKenzie, The University of Western Ontario

Pam McKenzie researches the everyday and teaches in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at The University of Western Ontario.

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Published

2018-02-02

Issue

Vol. 41 No. 125 (2017)

Section

Refereed Research Articles

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