Libraries and librarians don't just worry about the mind. A special double issue of Library Trends takes a look at “Information and the Body.” Guest edited by Andrew M. Cox, Brian Griffin, and Jenna Hartel, the issues bring together researchers interested in embodied information, including in how we receive information through the senses, what the body “knows,” and the way the body is a sign that can be interpreted by others.
Cox is a senior lecturer at the Information School, University of Sheffield, where he is also head of the Digital Societies Research Group. Griffin is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto, Canada. Hartel is an associate professor at the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto.
The trio worked together to participate in a Q&A about the double issue. The issues are now available on Project MUSE.
Issue 1: Winter 2018
Issue 2: Spring 2018a>
How did this double issue come about?
The idea for the issue came from working together on two previous articles related to information and serious leisure. Reflecting on some of the cases we were interested in, such as music and running, we realised that the issue of the role of the body in information behaviour was really very important. While some existing work touched on this, we saw the potential to do much more in this space.
At the same time there was a healthy debate between us about whether LIS was equipped to address such issues or whether it should be the focus. The call for papers revealed many scholars starting to work in this area, and bringing them together in two special issues was an exciting opportunity to raise the profile of all this research and collect it together for Library Trends readers.
What makes this issue important to information studies as a whole right now?
A relentless focus on the digital in the last few decades has tended to distract LIS from the continuing importance of the body (and affect) in information activities. Such issues are constantly being rediscovered as important, then forgotten again. The digital has become so much a part of everyday life through ubiquitous, mobile access, so it makes sense to think again how the body is implicated in our daily information activities, because even the digital is now embodied. Such developments as voice recognition, haptic interfaces and ambient intelligence all re-embody technologies.
What makes this issue important to librarians right now?
The digital has meant library space can be used more imaginatively than simply for housing row upon row of books and printed journals. Libraries have been reinvented as information commons and learning commons. In the wake of this there has been an explosion of interest in the study and redesign of spaces, often using user experience (UX) and ethnographic methods.
This work has paid close attention to the way people actually use spaces and how small reconfigurations can increase usage. The material environment and its impact on how learning and information discovery happens comes to the fore. The role of the body in information seeking and learning becomes a key issue that librarians should be concerned with.
What did you learn in putting the putting the issue together?
One thing that we learned was the range of perspectives that could be brought to this topic: including those who would argue against information studies shifting its focus in this direction at all! We have papers drawing on evolutionary biology, health sciences, phenomenology, practice theory, sensory studies, etc. Contributions reflect a global interest in the topic, with papers from nearly every continent.
How does this specifically influence the future of libraries internationally?
Libraries as learning spaces have had a new lease of life. There is so much to rediscover about how people use information in the physical space of the library, especially in tandem with digital tools, like smartphones. New technologies are starting to focus on the senses with new forms of haptic interface and “ambient” delivery of personalised material to our phone based on GPS. This will again prompt us to rethink use of space and its role in information seeking. Sensor data in the “smart library” will give us management information to see how temperature, light and sound impact on space usage. But we will also need qualitative studies to understand how our bodies are implicated in information practices.
