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Storytime programs for young children are ritual events in the everyday life of the public library. This article analyzes data from two such programs to identify and analyze the work carried out by program leaders, their adult and child participants, and other social actors in other settings (e.g., library CEOs) in order to enable the program to happen. The study builds on research on the public library as a physical space and on the library in the life of the user by describing the often invisible literacy, information, and caring work that goes into accomplishing social settings within the physical space of the library. We contend that the work carried out to produce storytime is both discursively bound and value laden and that storytime participants constitute an emerging discourse community whose work coordinates and is simultaneously coordinated by the ongoing creation and maintenance of its discursive boundaries.

This analysis of transcripts of interviews with a specific group of information seekers (pregnant women) identifies the context-specific discursive techniques that they used in enhancing or undermining the authority of peer and professional information sources. (Contains 74 references.) (MES)

Data from two story-time programs are examined to identify and analyze the work carried out by program leaders, adult and child participants in order to produce the program. It is argued that the work is discursively bound as well as value laden, and that participants comprise an emerging discourse community whose work coordinates, and is simultaneously coordinated by, the continuing creation and maintenance of its discursive boundaries.

The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one by Jung-ran Park on the linguistic approaches of discourse analysis and another by Annemaree Lloyd and Tiffany Veinot on social practices.