Human at the centre: the role of librarians in shaping academic AI
FROM CLARIVATE
The rapid rise of AI triggered a spectrum of perspectives. At one extreme, doomsday predictions suggest knowledge work is impacted and jobs displaced. On the other are dismissive voices, downplaying AI as another technology hype. In between, many – including librarians – see AI as an exciting opportunity, opening new possibilities.
Professor Karim Lakhani, a specialist in workplace AI at Harvard Business School, offers a balanced view, stating: “AI is not going to replace humans, but humans with AI are going to replace humans without AI”.
This line of thinking suggests that librarians who use AI capabilities might gain an edge in nearly every aspect of their work. Some claim that we’re already in an AI revolution, with various tools that enhance productivity, aid research, and support data-driven decision-making through cataloging, research discovery and analytics, learning assistants, and so on. As these evolve, libraries are likely to discover new ways to increase their productivity and reinforce their value to research and learning.
Just as libraries adjusted to “the search engine revolution” and changes to content discovery and access, adapting to AI and balancing its benefits with their mission of providing trustworthy information is key to libraries’ successes.
Striking the right balance between automation and human oversight, designing solutions that meet communities’ needs, and maintaining reputable ethical and intellectual rigour libraries are known for will determine libraries’ continued role as stewards of knowledge in an AI-driven future. By embracing change, libraries can sustain and evolve.
Prioritising use cases
Librarians play a vital role in identifying AI use cases, ensuring that they align with their core mission, such as research discovery, enhancing student outcomes, and increasing productivity. To safeguard that AI complements rather than disrupts library functions, they can prioritise use cases based on strategic and operational benefits.
Operationally, AI can support core tasks, enabling focus on advancing literacy, assisting early career researchers, or helping with complex literature reviews. Strategically, AI-driven analytics can provide insights into users, helping tailor collections.
The Pulse of the LibraryTM report from ClarivateTM illustrates areas where AI applications are deemed most valuable:
Developing AI
AI implementation in academic libraries should balance practical improvements and strategic advancements. Through library consultations, four primary AI application themes emerged: enhancing existing practices, introducing transformation, accelerating productivity, and advancing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) goals.
Enhancing practices
Existing library services can be powerfully enhanced by AI; for example, natural language search can simplify Boolean queries for students. AI tools can also compile data from various sources to make information more accessible for researchers, or streamline literature review processes, enabling quicker, comprehensive searches across vast data sets.
By streamlining processes and enhancing user experience, AI can make libraries more accessible and efficient.
Transformation
AI offers new possibilities, like interactive tools helping users to “converse” with data, uncovering trends once unimaginable. AI can guide researchers, ensuring data integrity and combating misinformation. It can also enhance student literacy by guiding assignments and readings, turning potential misuse into a learning opportunity, thus boosting library impact.
Accelerating productivity
Routine, time-consuming tasks like metadata management can be streamlined by AI tools, which can also assist with user enquiries by swiftly retrieving information. It can optimise acquisition processes, helping libraries to allocate resources efficiently and tailor collections to the evolving needs of faculties, researchers, and students. As AI handles routine tasks, librarians can focus on more strategic and impactful initiatives.
Advancing DEI
Support for DEI goals can be provided by AI by enhancing equitable access to resources and consistently offering high-quality services to all users. When properly applied, AI can improve accessibility, reduce bias and ensure inclusivity in libraries.
Establishing guardrails
Striking the right balance is essential: AI handles processes efficiently, but human oversight is crucial to upholding integrity. Establishing clear principles helps guide balance and safeguard core values:
- Transparency: Ensuring that AI-driven systems use sound sources, provide explanations on how outputs are generated and offer easy access to citations helps maintain trust in AI-supplied information.
- Ethics: AI tools must uphold ethical standards, including measures to minimise misinformation and mitigate issues like hallucinations and bias.
- Security: Libraries need to ensure that the AI tools they deploy uphold strict data privacy standards. This means protecting user data while adhering to the evolving global regulations around AI and privacy.
Evaluating AI outputs
Ensuring the quality and reliability of AI outputs is a key challenge. Traditional quality assurance techniques don’t apply to large language models (LLMs), as their responses are inconsistent and context-dependent. Human testing, while effective, is time-consuming and impractical for ongoing assessment. This means new methods and metrics are needed to evaluate AI performance.
Partnering with vendors
While vendors are responsible for testing AI tools, libraries can participate in beta programs and provide feedback to refine tools. By sharing real-world experiences, they help vendors align AI tools with standards and assist product development.
User feedback
Libraries collect user feedback from students, faculty, and researchers to help vendors continuously adapt and refine AI solutions to meet users’ evolving needs.
AI performance metrics
Developing clear metrics to assess AI’s effectiveness remains ongoing. Accuracy, relevance of results, and ethical compliance are critical, and continued collaboration between libraries and vendors is essential in developing metrics.
Upholding integrity
Upholding integrity in research and learning is critical. Libraries are essential in helping students and faculty use AI tools effectively and understand their limitations and ethical implications.
Promoting AI literacy
Libraries are well-positioned to guide users in critically assessing AI-generated content. They help users avoid potential pitfalls and make informed choices by teaching users to differentiate between reliable outputs and those that are flawed or biased.
Educating users
Training students and faculty on the effective use of AI, its limitations, and ethical considerations helps them engage thoughtfully with AI tools while understanding benefits and risks.
Community collaboration
Collaboration with peer institutions, academic organisations, and vendors is integral to responsible AI use. Sharing best practices contributes to developing a responsible AI ecosystem.
Conclusion
Librarians play an essential role as AI becomes more deeply integrated into environments. By embracing AI, they remain critical facilitators of knowledge, leveraging technology to improve user experience while ensuring that human judgment remains at the core.
The next chapter of libraries is likely to be defined by how well human expertise and AI are blended. By balancing automation and human skills, promoting digital literacy, and collaborating with the wider community, librarians can ensure AI enhances their mission, not replaces it. This thoughtful integration of AI will shape the future of libraries, keeping them at the heart of the institutions they serve.
This article draws on the Clarivate webinar session: Demystifying AI and what it means for libraries.
To learn more about Clarivate Academic AI solutions, visit clarivate.com/ai/academia