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This article describes an approach based on structuration theory (Giddens, 1979(Giddens, , 1984 Orlikowski, 1992Orlikowski, , 2000 and communities of practice (Wenger, 1998) that can be used to guide investigation into the dynamics of online question and answer (Q&A) communities. This approach is useful because most research on Q&A sites has focused attention on information retrieval, information seeking behavior, and information intermediation and has assumed uncritically that the online Q&A community plays an important role in these domains of study. Assuming instead that research on online communities should take into account social, technical, and contextual factors (Kling, Rosenbaum, & Sawyer, 2005), the utility of this approach is demonstrated with an analysis of three online Q&A communities seen as communities of practice. This article makes a theoretical contribution to the study of online Q&A communities and, more generally, to the domain of social reference.

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation.The paper investigates the problems of using commercial search engines for web-link research and attempts to clarify the nature of the problems involved in the use of these engines. The research finds that search engines are highly variable in the results they produce, are limited in the search functions they offer, have poorly and/or incorrectly documented functions, use search logics that are opaque, and change the search functions they offer over time. The limitations which are inherent in commercial search engines should cause researchers to have reservations about any conclusions that rely on these tools as primary data-gathering instruments. The shortcomings are market-driven rather than inherent properties of the web or of web-searching technologies. Improved functionalities are within the technical capabilities of search engine programmers and could be made available to the research community. The findings also offer mild support for the validity of the connection between web links and citations as analogues of intellectual linkage. 375 375

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