I investigated how school library work is socially organized and how that social organization affects cooperation with teachers and others in the school. The research uses the institutional ethnography frame of inquiry, providing a way of looking at how the role and function of the school librarian/ school media specialist is socially-organized and institutionally-oriented. The social organization was apparent in the categories of collaboration, technology, and access. A better understanding of how library work is socially organized will help working librarians understand how to negotiate their workplace more effectively. An understanding of how to examine the social organization of an institution can help inform research and teaching in school librarianship as well. This presentation is a follow-up to a presentation at IASL 2008 conference in Berkeley, California.

The research examines how school library work is socially organized and how social organization affects cooperation with teachers and others in the school. The researcher uses the institutional ethnography frame of inquiry, providing a way of looking at the role and function of the school librarian/ school media specialist as socially-organized and institutionally-oriented. Using ethnographic data gathering techniques of interviews, participant-observation, and textual analysis in a middle school in the Midwestern United States, the researcher describes social organization of school library work in the categories of collaboration, technology, and access. Viewing school library work through the institutional ethnography frame of reference reveals how powerless media specialists and teachers can be --how the structures that are supposed to make the non-instructional and disciplinary parts of their work easier consume their time and affect their interactions with students. Institutional ethnography shows people where the work is, especially the work that is not recognized in the official institutional discourse. With the knowledge of how the work is shaped, school librarians can get a clearer view of how to work within the institution to achieve the goals of librarianship: providing physical and intellectual access to information.

Stumbling around: Towards an approach to Institutional Ethnography as a frame of inquiry into library work.Abstract: This paper focuses on the researcher's experience developing an approach to institutional ethnography to examine library work in a Midwestern USA middle school. Throughout the year-and-ahalf process of developing an approach to the methodology, gaining access, collecting data, analyzing data, and writing the dissertation, I kept various journals and writings showing how I learned to see the library ethnographically.Résumé : Cette communication porte sur l'expérience de la chercheure lors du développement d'une approche d'ethnographie institutionnelle afin d'évaluer le travail bibliothéconomique dans une école intermédiaire du Midwest des États-Unis. Durant le processus d'un an et demi qu'a nécessité le développement de la méthodologie, l'accès à l'institution, la collecte et l'analyse de données et la rédaction de la thèse, j'ai consigné par écrit comment j'ai appris à concevoir la bibliothèque d'un point de vue ethnographique.

This institutional ethnography starts from the standpoint of a school librarian to examine how school library work is coordinated and explained by social institutions. Areas of focus include the work of accounting for materials, the work of accounting for students, and the work of understanding and negotiating schedules.

The work of a school librarian is shaped by relations seen and unseen. Problematizing the effects of these relations on the institutions of education, librarianship, and school librarianship can lead to a greater understanding of the work of the librarian. I will use institutional ethnography methods to investigate relations of education, librarianship, and school librarianship Institutional ethnography has been used to investigate the coordination of activities in other human services, but institutional ethnography has not yet been applied intensively in educational settings (Smith, 2005). Institutional ethnography can be used as a method of inquiry into the work of people in educational settings.