Information seeking is a central and inherently collaborative activity in the emergency department (ED) which is the common entry point to hospitals for nearly all acute patients. In this paper, we investigate how ED clinicians’ collabo-rative information seeking (CIS) is shaped by the procedures that the clinicians follow in the ED. Based on observations in two Danish EDs, we identify four pro-cedures prominent to how CIS is accomplished: the triage procedure, the timeouts, the coordinating nurse, and the recurrent opportunities for information seeking at the whiteboard. We then discuss how CIS activities are impacted by these procedures and the challenges to effective CIS in these settings. We conclude with some thoughts about future studies of CIS in healthcare settings