Managing documents at home for serious leisure: a case study of the hobby of gourmet cooking

Abstract

PurposeThis paper aims to describe the way participants in the hobby of gourmet cooking in the USA manage culinary information in their homes.Design/methodology/approachThe study utilizes domain analysis and serious leisure as a conceptual framework and employs an ethnographic approach. In total 20 gourmet cooks in the USA were interviewed at home and then their culinary information collections were documented through a guided tour and photographic inventory. The resulting ethnographic record was analyzed using grounded theory and NVivo software.FindingsThe findings introduce the personal culinary library (PCL): a constellation of cooking‐related information resources and information structures in the home of the gourmet cook, and an associated set of upkeep activities that increase with the collection's size. PCLs are shown to vary in content, scale, distribution in space, and their role in the hobby. The personal libraries are characterized as small, medium or large and case studies of each extreme are presented. Larger PCLs are cast as a bibliographic pyramid distributed throughout the home in the form of a mother lode, zone, recipe collection, and binder.Practical implicationsInsights are provided into three areas: scientific ethnography as a methodology; a theory of documents in the hobby; and the changing role of information professionals given the increasing prevalence of home‐based information collections.Originality/valueThis project provides an original conceptual framework and research method for the study of information in personal spaces such as the home, and describes information phenomena in a popular, serious leisure, hobby setting.