Bodies, Brains, and Machines: An Exploration of the Relationship between the Material and Affective States of Librarians and Information Systems

Abstract

This paper uses the idea of information networks and the ways librarian bodies are called to serve as a relay within information systems. The founding of librarianship as a profession in the Victorian period during a period of increased bureaucracy and mechanization has had a profound and far-reaching impact on the way women's bodies and affective states are subsumed into information systems. The history of librarianship is read alongside Kittler's analysis of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula as a story not about vampires, but about office technology. The connection between women's bodies and information processing is further traced through an analysis of the film Desk Set. The film is examined for the ways librarian bodies and affective states interact with computer technologies to show that women are encouraged to fully give over brains and bodies to serve as nodes along a library information systems, in effect becoming cyborgs. Finally, contemporary issues around digital systems and affect are examined as a possible means to provide a bulwark against the complete surrender to capitalist information flows.

Partnering in Knowledge Production: Roles for Librarians in the Digital Humanities

“…The library profession's cultural values and labour are shaped toward service models (Allison-Cassin, 2020). Recent LIS literature critiques the service model and suggests a shift to, and preference for, librarians as collaborative partners rather than strictly service and support staff.…”

“…Academic librarians exist in 'liminal' spaces within academic institutions (Allison-Cassin, 2020;Logsdon et al, 2017). Liminality is "the in-between space in relationships, social roles, and contexts in times or at places of transition and change" (Davis, 2008).…”

Spatial thinking, gender and immaterial affective labour in the post-Fordist academic library

“…In the final section of this paper, I review recent LIS scholarship that explores the ways in which the socio-economic conditions and values of the post-Fordist academy work to diminish and even subsume the immaterial affective labour of librarians (Sloniowski, 2016;Allison-Cassin, 2020;Revitt, 2020). While this scholarship is informed by disparate theoretical approaches, it shares a common desire to highlight the complex "relationships between technology and the feminized/gendered work of librarians" (Allison-Cassin, 2020, p. 411) and the ways that this labour is devalued even as it serves to reproduce the academy.…”

“…I begin by outlining the spatial-temporal imaginaries that underlie discourses of globalization and their impact on higher education and academic libraries. I then review recent LIS scholarship that explores the ways in which the socioeconomic conditions and values of the post-Fordist academy work to diminish and even subsume the immaterial affective labour of librarians (Sloniowski, 2016;Allison-Cassin, 2020;Revitt, 2020). While this work employs disparate theoretical and conceptual frameworks, it shares a common intent to highlight "the fraught relationships" between capitalism, technology "and the feminized/gendered work of librarians" (Allison-Cassin, 2020, p. 411), and the ways these relationships devalue and erase librarians' immaterial labour as reproductive labour.…”

Electronic Communication of Non-Profit Organizations in a Global Society

“…The information system consists of several activities, which include the collection of information, its processing, storage, retrieval and dissemination. There are other elements connected to the information system, among which we could include information documents, information technology workers and information processes [17,18]. The following figure shows the components of the information system.…”