Discussion of method

This section will discuss the extent to which this dissertation represents a successful ethnography. The author’s own interpretations of how well ethnographic methods were used will inform the conclusion as to the value of this study. For convenience, it will be divided into sections although, as has already been argued, this presents an artificially linear view of the ethnographic process. Firstly, the success of the field work stage will be discussed, and then an examination of any issues raised by the write of stage will follow.

6.1 The field work

Although the field work stage was conducted over only three full days, enormous quantities of notes were produced. As the author’s time doing observations progressed, so he produced more and more copious notes. This is perhaps because the purpose of the notes was refined meaning that the author was able to be more lucid and lengthy in response to observations and perhaps because it became clearer what sort of things needed to be noted down. Although more than adequate quantities of data were collected during the time allowed for observation, it is clear that if the ethnography had more clearly adhered to the guidance in the literature (for example, Goffman, 1989: 130) and had been conducted over a much longer period of time, then many more ‘layers of significance’ (Geertz, 1973) would have become apparent and relevant.

Time also constrained this study in that the author was initially concerned to complete the observation stage of the research before the summer semester ended, enabling an examination of the IC staff at their most busy. In retrospect, this may not have been entirely necessary because the ‘actual’ working life of the IC staff would have been just as visible during the vacation period. In addition, more time to prepare for the observation would have enabled a wider reading of ethnographic methods and the author may have become a more proficient ethnographer.

Another problem that could perhaps be explained by the time constraints under which this study was conducted, but which is also mentioned by Emerson et al as a common problem for ethnographers (Emerson et al, 2001: 356), is that the author was conscious of seeking things out to note down. This self-conscious searching for important or noteworthy occurrences may have produced an account that orients events too closely around the author’s presence, and to some extent, may have removed the account from what actually occurred. The balance between giving primacy to the author’s interpretations, and avoiding “anticipating” or exaggerating events and significances (Geertz, 1973: 26) was hard to maintain and, indeed, this distinction proved hard to draw. A more practiced ethnographer, or one more thoroughly versed in ethnographic principles, may not have found this key competency so hard to master.

One of the author’s central concerns was making sure that participants were not made to feel awkward, insecure or embarrassed by the observations of them. This was for ethical reasons, in that none of the participants were to be harmed or disturbed, and for epistemic reasons in that the participants had to be observed at their most natural. In some circumstances, the participants were not particularly disturbed by the author’s presence and would not appear to be conscious of being under observation (especially at busy times). However, at quieter times, or when certain people were being observed, they would act in a way which suggested they were very conscious of the author’s presence. In fact, nobody was made particularly uncomfortable or was adversely affected by the study, but some people did comment on being observed. One Library person joked: “so, you’re here to see me in action”, and rolled her sleeves up, ironically expressing a great challenge being met full on. Another person kept asking me what I was writing down as I took brief notes, which made me feel fairly awkward because I was not sure quite how to respond. Goffman mentions situations such as this and recommends taking “off-phases” notes, so that they do not correspond to anything that has just gone on, and also having a non-committal response to questions like this that soothes participants into their natural state again (Goffman, 1989: 130). When I told one person with whom I was working on the counter about my study she started recommending other people in the library who I could interview, which was only a problem in so far as it distracted her from her work, and thus diluted the subject of the observations.

Thus, the field work did suffer because of the unnecessary constraint of doing it so early in the research period, because the author was inexperienced at judging the degree to his own interpretations should be emphasised, and because the author’s presence occasionally affected the participants. However, no one was harmed from an ethical perspective, and plenty of valuable data was collected which formed a rich and productive basis for the rest of this dissertation.

6.2 The write-up

Geertz states that the process of ethnography can be summed up as “an elaborate venture in…‘thick description’” (Geertz, 1973: 6). The extent to which the write-up sections of this dissertation successfully achieve this will be discussed below.

Central to some ethnographic write-ups is the “magic moment” when the ethnographer crosses the “metaphysical shadow line” and is accepted into the group being studied, or suddenly realises something that allows for the interpretation of great swathes of action that had not been previously understood (see Geertz, 1973a: 413). These moments were lacking in this dissertation because of the author’s already close association with the subjects of the study. As a member of the IC staff already, the moment of acceptance into this group could not be recorded in this dissertation. Neither could many moments of sudden realisation as to the significance of certain actions, because the author was already accustomed to most of the library related action. However, that some of these moments regarding CiCS’ rituals were recorded, indicates a problem in trying to ethnographically compare two groups when the author is very familiar with one and not the other. For example, the jokes that the CiCS people make amongst themselves were highlighted, and interpretive explanations for them were offered. However, no Library jokes were commented on, suggesting that perhaps the author did not find them note-worthy, rather than that they were non-existent.

When compared to famous work-place ethnographies such as Kunda’s Engineering Culture (1992), the Findings section of this dissertation is quite scant and appears lacking in ‘thick description’. The narrative arc of entering and then touring the building and organisation, which Kunda uses to draw the reader into the observations which form the basis of his theses (Kunda, 1992: Ch 2) is lacking from this account. However, the Findings section does replicate this in some sense by taking the reader through the historical development of the Information Commons, and then the physical building, before discussing observations of the staff at the counter and finally in the staff areas. Thus, some readers may be “pulled into the [IC staff’s] work lives” by the Findings section of this dissertation, just as Bechky claims Orr’s Talking About Machines has the power to pull readers into the working lives of photocopier technicians (Bechky, 2006: 1759).

One factor that could explain the apparent lack of thick description in the Findings section of this dissertation is that the write-up had to be separated over three separate sections. The Theoretical Literature and Discussion of Findings sections are as much a part of the write-up as the Findings section. It is in all of these sections that the author’s interpretation of what was witnessed whilst performing the field work is extended and widened to include analysis of how the observations fit with what other commentators have said. To argue that the Findings section lacks the perception of layers of significance that is essential for any thick description is to ignore the holistic structure of ethnographic research, and to give too much significance to the constraints of the prescribed structure of this dissertation. The layers of significance present in the Findings section are discussed more deeply and are given more meaning and relevance in the Discussion of Findings section, which in turn relies completely upon the context that is set up in the Theoretical Literature.

However, the way that theory is used in this dissertation is, to some extent, ‘cooked’ . In an ethnography conducted over an appropriate time scale by an experienced ethnographer, theory would be used concurrently with the observations to ‘thicken’ the ethnographer’s interpretations, and indeed Okely comments that “years of comparative reading” may have gone into the preparation for the field work stage of an ethnography (Okely, 1994: 19). In this ethnography, the reading of theory occurred largely after the field work had been conducted, thus enabling the author to ‘cook’ the use of theories, and focus on areas of literature that it became clear after the observation would be relevant. Then having selected some areas of literature that seemed pertinent, the author was able to exclude other areas that presented themselves as the research progressed and as the author’s interpretations ‘thickened’. One theoretical area that was not used concerned ‘Boundary Objects’, an area of research which seeks to describe items used to aid the “interactions between participants of heterogeneous groups” (Star, 1989: 46). This research has been applied to such diverse areas as natural history museums (Star and Griesemer, 1989) and product development (Carlile, 2002), so applying it to an academic library would not have been incoherent. But for pragmatic reasons of space, this research could not be included. Abbott’s theory of professions and the theories of expertise were selected as the theoretic lenses in this study because these are areas that could be shown to be related at a fairly fundamental level to each other, and which appeared to have quite deep relevance to the subject of study in this dissertation.

In summary, the potential flaws in the write-up of this ethnographic study reflect the compromises that are inherent in writing a dissertation. Thus, the separation of the Findings, Literature Review and the Discussion sections resulted in a breakdown of the holism that is essential to ethnographies and went some way to weakening the thickness of the description and interpretation included in any of these sections. In addition the time and space constraints meant that a truly thorough analysis and interpretation of groups in the IC was impossible. And yet, some insightful and interesting observations were recorded, and some important conclusions which go beyond those mentioned in the boarder literature were drawn from the author’s interpretation of a novel situation, meaning that this ethnography did “plunge more deeply” into areas other commentators have merely sketched, making it functionally successful according to Geertz (1973: 25).

Conclusions

7.1 Survey of the present study

This dissertation was motivated by a lack of ethnographic studies of converged services, and by the author’s own experiences of differences between the library and computer service staff in the Information Commons. In addition to the fact that they have not been applied to this topic area very often, ethnographic methods were also selected because this study required the use a research method which allowed the author to be a member of the group to be examined, and crucially, because an unobtrusive method was required which would allow for the examination of the work that was actually done by IC staff – this study could not divorce the participants from the context within which they worked.

Ethnography is a method which assumes the existence of a world of constructed social facts that are different for different people. High emphasis is placed upon the author’s ability and tendency to reinterpret these interpretations, so the fieldwork stage of all ethnographies involves the author’s immersion in the world of the group to be studied. The author of this dissertation spent three days observing those at work in the IC, recoding notes whenever possible. The findings were transcribed into several categories that provoked research into relevant areas of theoretical literature, and as the most fertile areas of literature presented themselves, so the findings were re-transcribed with these areas of literature as a guide to their contents. Expertise and Abbott’s idea of ‘jurisdictional settlement’ were eventually settled upon as the basis of the discussion section – in which the theoretical literature and the findings from the IC were brought together for analysis.


The author’s final interpretation of the findings from the IC was that CiCS staff demonstrate higher levels of expertise from both the positivist ‘psychological perspective’ and from the interpretive ‘sociological perspective’. To explain this interpretation, it was argued that CiCS staff had attracted more sympathy for their methods of problem solving in the ‘public arena’ (Abbott, 1988), which meant that they were able to perform better as experts, and were able to redefine the qualities required to be an expert according to their own strengths. Alternative but complimentary explanations were that librarianship is a ‘client-centred’ profession (Danner, 1998) and so the Library staff were not willing to emphasise their own cache of knowledge and thus could not effectively present themselves experts. In addition, it was argued that computer service staff do not share the ‘bureaucratic’ (Weber, 1968) structure of libraries, and it is an individual’s skill and talent which defines their position within an organisation (Zabusky, 1997) rather than their rank or grade in the hierarchy – so Library staff do not perform as experts because authority is granted by rank alone, whereas the individual skills of a computer technician are important enough to make them want to perform well as experts.

The settlement in the Information Commons was interpreted by the author as being one in which the Library staff were suborned by the CiCS staff, because CiCS’ tasks appear to be coveted by Library staff, whilst library tasks appear have been successfully characterised as low status and undesirable by CiCS staff. However, the high level of interdependence between these groups is emphasised, and the largely harmonious relationship that exists between CiCS and Library staff is maintained and fuelled by this interdependence.

All the stages of an ethnography are thoroughly holistic and so separating them into the sections that are required for the writing of a dissertation distributes ideas and means a less ‘thick’ analysis is possible in any one section: the findings themselves, the review of theoretical literature and the analysis of the findings using the theoretical literature should all ideally be integrated and read as a coherent whole. It was also argued that the time constraints under which this dissertation had to be completed partially compromised the attempt at a full ethnography. However, this dissertation did succeed in conducting a proximate study of the work of library and computer service staff in a converged service, which maintained the required level of honesty as to the role played by the author’s interpretation of events, and thus, an honest and sound ethnography can be said to have been conducted. The overall findings were tangible and interesting, and added layers of detail and understanding to the theoretical constructs that they relied upon. So, despite the structural and temporal constraints of this study, ethnographic methods were employed with success.

7.2 Recommendations for future research

There is considerable scope for ‘thickening’ the current analysis using the theoretical frameworks already introduced. In addition to the models of ‘settlement’ that he describes, Abbott gives a far more detailed account of the various ways in which jurisdictional struggles progress at a workplace level (Abbott, 1988: 65-69) than there was space for in this dissertation. An interesting study could be developed to ethnographically depict the mechanisms used by competing occupational groups in a jurisdictional struggle, and much of the ethnographic material collected in the current dissertation would be relevant. With a longer term study, the relationships that develop between the IC staff, and between the IC staff and their tasks could be more fully explored, and some sense of the non-static nature of workplace settlements could be captured.

Other interesting studies could use ethnographic methods to explore the impact of belonging to a converged service on the images that library and computer service staff hold of themselves, and of their colleagues. Are library staff thought of more or less like the paradigm maintaining, bureaucratically rigid, ‘custodian of discourse’ that they are sometimes characterised as (Radford and Radford, 2001) once they are brought to work more closely with other, newer professions? Equally, do computer service technicians continue to think of themselves as ‘outsiders’ (Zabusky, 1997) in a task area where they appear (on the basis of this dissertation’s findings) to be the ascendant group? The perception of professional identity is an issue of particular relevance in converged services and an ethnographic approach could prove particularly fruitful in investigating it. Ethnography posses a unique power to explore issues of perception and self-perception, and studies of converged services from this perspective would be original and valuable.

7.3 Final Remarks

This dissertation concludes that library and computer service technicians display expertise to significantly different levels. In the Information Commons, the settlement of jurisdiction is interpreted to involve the subordination of Library staff by CiCS staff, although widely recognised interdependence exists between these groups. The ethnography detailed in this study did, therefore, succeed in delivering results that are original and of interest. It is fitting to finish with the deeply interpretive statement that ethnography embraces the inherent and defining complexity of social situations, and can offer researchers who use it a profound insight into the social world. The significant difficulty in producing successful ethnographies is comprehensively balanced by the value of this insight.

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Links checked 30/08/07

Hiatus

There were no posts for over two years on this blog because it seemed a bit pointless to keep a record of dissertation progress here, whilst actually writing the bloody thing.

I now post the dissertation in its entirety for the benefit largely of the post I have just written for the Library routes thing that Wikiman set up

Clarificatory Discussion

This post is an attempt to record some of the ideas that came out of a discussion I had with my supervisor.

The Name of the Library
I began by stating how I felt about using the name of the new library to be studied (i.e. that I didn't want to use it at all). He felt that this was impractical and that my arguments for wanting to entirely anonymize it were not sound:

• I thought this was a handy shortcut around ethical issues of anonymity (of which more later). He felt there were better ways of achieving this, such as requesting that the dissertation be not allowed for public consultation for x years;
• I thought it would be less generalisable with a particular library's name and details all over it. He commented that it was not particular generalisable anyway, since the library under consideration is unique, and the aspects of staff interaction that I want to study are also unique. He also mentioned that problems I had foreseen to do with a lack of purity of cultural distinction since the two groups had been working together for six months already, were in fact not really problems at all since no cultural distinction could ever be achieved however far we go back. Also if the name of the institution involved could be freely used then facts like this would be interesting background facts that would have to be mentioned anyway in the 'research background' section of the dissertation.

Ethical Dimensions to Consider

• It is vitally important to ensure that participant consent is established before the ethnographic study can begin. This is a lot easier considering that I am studying the interactions between staff, rather than the interactions between the staff and students, who I would also have to get consent from (in theory).
• It is important to value the contributions of each participant equally (given that other things are equal). This is something to look at in more detail since I will be a member of one of the groups to be examined and therefore potentially more willing to give one group more attention and so on.

See Atkinson et al (2001) The Handbook of Ethnography, SAGE: London (esp. Chapter 29 on 'Ethics and Ethnography'

Epistemic Dimensions to Consider

• The question of how far ethnography can genuinely deliver knowledge about a particular culture will be of great theoretic importance to this study.
• The fact that this study will have to be of the form of a participant observation means that issues relating to the fact that I am very much involved with the culture involved will have to discussed at length. Does this mean that I am less able to make judgements about how the cultures interact, or more so. Are my judgements less valid or more valid due to the fact that I am so closely involved?

See Spradley (2000) Participant Observation and Jorgenson (1989) Participant Observation

Boundary Objects
After discussing the idea of studying boundary objects, I think its still a good idea. My supervisor seemed particularly interested in the idea of experts as boundary objects. I agree that this does seem a promising idea. He recommended looking for particular situations that I could locate observations that would be particularly revealing of attitudes towards experts, such as the counter.
We discussed how the literature sees boundary objects as things created in order to bring two communities together, rather than as objects that are revealing of the differences between two communities, and he argued that this should be borne in mind, and I should think about other phrases for the things I want to study, such as 'boundary concepts'. It might turn out experts are not genuinely shared in which case this can be rejected, but it is a useful analytic tool to have which can be utilised should anything spring out.

He thought the idea about librarians appealing to process as the expert, and computer technicians appealing to people as expert was interesting, but pointed out that this might not be how it turns out in the end.

Research Procedure
He recommended that I conduct observations on several (not a lot) of days at the beggining of the research process, focussing on some places or things that I think will be revealing of differneces in culture, or of similarity of culture, maybe with some things that are shared but viewed differently (boundary objects) in mind. He thought that the counter and roaming were particularly good examples of places to begin observing.

I would then conduct in depth and open ended interviews with a few people that I think would be particularly interesting on some subjects that have beome apparent as demonstrating something interesting about the groups.

The observations would be noted down and the interviews transcribed, and both analysed (or coded) for the remainder of the summer.

I should also start observing from now on how the groups interact. I should note down lots of stuff, as Okley recommends, especially things that I do not understand, and then see how I come to understand them etc. Anything that stikes me as interesting or relevant, or as a potential new esearch direction should be noted down because this is an important part of my overall impression of the place and the culture therein.

Baszanger and Dodier "Ethnography: relating part to whole"

Baszanger and Dodier (2004) "Ethnography: relating the part to the whole" in Silverman (edit.)Qualitative Research - theory, method and practice 2nd Edition. London: SAGE. 9-34

Ethnographic studies must satisfy 3 requirements simultaneously:

• The need for an empirical approach - phenomena needs to be empirically observed and cannot be deduced (introspection cannot deliver results needed)
• The need to remain open to elements that cannot be codified at the time of study - disponible; unexpected phenomena can come to light; subjects can behave endogenously, not influenced by study arrangements; openness conflicts with need to have a method (a plan), but this duality is an implicit part of fieldwork
• The need to ground phenomena observed in the field - must connect what is observed with a backdrop; different observation sequences must be integrated into global referential framework.

Ethnography can be divided into three broad categories:

Integrative:

• Observation leads to the discovery of a cultural whole or mongraphic totalisation.
• Fieldwork reflections are created into an integrated vision of the world
• Gaining access to new points of view involves questioning and being made over/transformed (disponibility needed)
• Understanding only occurs after constant process of reciprocation between observer and phenomenon
• This method is flawed because it assumes that people share elements of a collective culture - is it inconsistent to assume this and maintain the openness mentioned above
• Geertz is key integrative ethnographer

Narrative:

• The process of totalisation (the write up) is seen as highly significant in all ethnography and normally as a solitary act
• The act of writing here is seen as just as important as the observation: the personal nature of account is given emphasis
• The final text is seen as a history of the observers interaction with the phenomena.
• But this approach must avoid the account being one persons trajectory though a series of events
• See Malinowsk A diary in the stricktest sense of the word and Clifford Writing Culutre

Combinative:

• This approach focus on culture as a common fund of actionable operations
• The ethnographer gradually enriches his understanding by building a catalogue of examples of actions that unite a group

The three approaches appear to be viewing culture in different ways:

• a whole to be discovered
• a relationship between an individual and a group
• an inventory of actions that a group uses

The idea is to distinguish between those who do belong and those who do not, or between those in the narrative and those not, or between those who utilise certain actions and those who do not.

I think its legitimate to cherry pick features of each approach so long as it is made entirely clear that the methodology is not pure in this sense.

The narrative one will be relevant to me as I will be a participant in what I observe. The literature on participant observation needs to be investigated, and its relationship to the requirements of ethnography need to be explained.

The idea of this research being reciprocal, where my opinions and actions help to form the picture of the phenomena observed, is important and cannot be ignored.

Endogenous: grows from within. This corresponds to the idea of disponibility. Both are required as states of mind when approaching an ethnographic study: so the observer can be made over, and does not commit to theories without first observing how the phenomena to be observed behave and interact.

Star and Griesemer "Institutional ecology, translations and boundary objects

Star and Griesemer (1989) "Institutional ecology, 'translations' and boundary objects: amateurs and professionals in Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39". Social Studies of Science 19 (3): 387-420

A case study of the confluence of various differing social worlds in a natural history museum. The idea of 'Boundary Objects' is invoked to explain how the social world communicate and work together.

Boundary Objects =

• Inhabit several intersecting social worlds and satisfy the information needs of each.
• Plastic enough to adapt local needs and constraints, yet robust enough to retain an identity.
• Weakly structured in common use but strongly structured in individual use.
• Abstract or concrete.
• Different meaning in each social world but common structure, so means of translation.
• Used to create and maintain coherence across social worlds.

So they must be abstract and concrete, specific and general conventionalised and customised and internally heterogeneous in order to fulfil their translation and coherence creating role.

When people collaborate from different social worlds , they frequently have to address objects crafted from elements of many different worlds. Each world has a hand in creating them for the next world, and frequently they have different meanings for each world.

When members of different worlds create boundary objects, their different perceptions are resolved into representations. this does not necessarily mean consensus: still clear traces of viewpoints.

For my research, something that is both abstract and concrete, possibly represented differently by both parties and that can also provide very good source of communication between each party, is the customer.

I need to look at how ethnographic methods can be applied to boundary object study: does it compromise disponibilty to assume that something is a boundary object; Star and Griesemer seem to have a functional view of boundary objects where they are created to fulfill some purpose but can I assume that they grow up independent of intention?

I had originally intended to use the procedural wiki as a boundary object, but this seems to concrete. I think that this is an object that is too robust to be a boundary object, partly because library staff have very little sense of propriety over it (I should be cautious of not jumping the gun here), but also because it is not clear the extent to which a shared artifact that is created by both groups could translate between them: that would seem to questions-beg (if it is created by both of them something must have enabled the collaboration, so what did the initial translating?).

The customer as boundary object seems like a more promising example because it is something that both groups have accessed in the past from entirely distinct viewpoints, and will continue to access in the future . The differing views of the customer (if they exist) may enable interesting triangulation towards deep seated assumptions about role and jurisdiction.

See also:
Star (1989) "The structure of ill-structured solutions: boundary objects and heterogeneous distributed problem solving" in Huhs and Gasser (edit.) Readings in Distributed AI 3 Melo Park CA: Morgan Kaufmann.