| Summary: | Many Library and Information Science (LIS) scholars have long articulated the importance of physical and social settings—the environment—when examining how individuals acquire, store, organize, maintain, dispose of, and use information in one of their home or work lives. Yet, few have raised the question of how these information practices are altered and affected in home office spaces, fused living and working environments that lie at the intersection of the personal and the professional. This thesis resulted from an exploratory, ethnographic research study centred upon describing and analyzing the habits of information management and information use that characterize home office settings—specifically, professional home offices that each serve as their user’s only workplace. It argues that the professional home office differs from both traditional professional offices in corporate or institutional settings and from personal home offices used for non-professional tasks and pursuits. The professional home offices of four printing company account managers provided the field from which data was gathered, collected by way of guided tours, diagramming, photography, interviews, and observation. Findings suggest that information practices in professional home offices are a continual negotiation between the two spheres of household and organization, but that this will not necessarily imply a compromise of one for the other.
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