Exploring AI Hands-On: Shaping the Future of Research Library Services
Creators: name: Verhaar, Peter
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: Artificial intelligence
subject: Machine learning
subject: Academic Libraries

description: During recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has become a buzzword, in society in general, and within the library community as well. This interest within the library sector is understandable, as the growing sophistication of data science and AI is likely to have far-reaching implications for many of its existing tasks. This workshop will reflect both on the potential applications of AI and on the caveats that ought to be born in mind as libraries implement services based on AI.

Part 1 (2 hours)

During the first section of the workshop, participants will be asked to carry out a number of practical activities to develop a better understanding of what data science and AI entail at a concrete level. These activities will concentrate on applications of AI in the context of research data management. The hands-on exercises will clarify how data science, and more particularly, generative AI systems based on Large Language Models (LLMs) can be used to clean and to enrich data sets. Topics will include the disambiguation and standardisation of references to named entities, the summarisation of lengthy texts, and the generation of metadata. During these exercises, participants make use of a selection of open datasets. They are required to bring their own laptops and they will receive specific information in advance of the workshop. These practical activities will illustrate some of the ways in which AI could potentially influence RDM and the services to support RDM.

Part 2 (45 minutes)

The second part of the workshop will consist of a critical reflection on a range of crucial questions, building on experiences gained during the first part. Given the growing relevance of data science of AI within academic libraries, It is of crucial importance for librarians to gain a good understanding not only of its functioning and its applications, but also of its broader ethical, cultural and legal implications. The debate will centre around the following discussion points:



Which skills and what type of knowledge do librarians need to develop to help researchers aiming to use tools based on AI?

How can librarians assist and guide students and researchers in their use of these technologies? How can such explanations of AI tools be incorporated in existing trainings for researchers?

Is it desirable and feasible to add a disclaimer when metadata have been generated by AI? Should researchers be advised to record the degree of certainty that a given metadata entry is “correct”? Should the use of AI prompt specific types of provenance statements?

Which guidelines and regulations have been proposed or implemented for the ethical and responsible use of AI? What can librarians do to promote such ethical guidelines?

Which aspects of intellectual property law need to be considered during the use and the training of LLMs?


Members of the working groups will present brief positions papers with tentative answers to these questions, which will subsequently be discussed in the workshop.