AI @ the Libraries

By: Daniel C. Mack, Associate Dean of University Libraries

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a hot topic today. Industry, trade, commerce, government, health care and education are all grappling with the proper approach to AI. Higher education is no different, and academic libraries are an important part of the conversation. The University of Maryland’s approach to AI is grounded in responsible and ethical use. While AI offers many benefits to researchers and educators, it also brings the potential for inappropriate use. This can lead to the spread of misinformation, unconscious promotion of biases, plagiarism and other issues of academic and research integrity. The Artificial Intelligence Interdisciplinary Institute at Maryland (AIM) is a collaborative, interdisciplinary endeavor focusing on advancing the public good through AI. We at the UMD Libraries have an important role in promoting the responsible use of AI in the curriculum, research enterprise and service mission of the university. We are partners in educating users, identifying content and solving problems through the mindful and ethical use of AI, including TerpAI, UMD’s own generative AI chatbot.

Librarians at UMD are teaching students and other users about how to use AI. More importantly, we are teaching users about when, why and how to use AI in a way that enhances their learning, fosters critical thinking, promotes research skills, and incorporates the ethical use and attribution of information. We offer workshops, course-related instruction sessions, online research guides and individualized sessions on AI literacy. These endeavors help our UMD community understand AI concepts and uses. Across campus we’re seeing all disciplines, from STEM to the humanities to the fine arts, incorporating AI into their research practices. At the UMD Libraries, we have a responsibility to make AI literacy accessible for all students and other library users. We encourage the ethical and appropriate use of AI in teaching, research and publishing.

When used responsibly, there are many possible applications for AI that can enhance library services and resources. Libraries can use AI to promote discovery and access to information, improve the description and arrangement of content and personalize the user experience. Many of our subscription-based online journals and databases incorporate AI-driven search tools that allow users to query using natural language and that customize search results based on individual researchers’ needs. SCOPUS, an abstract and citation database that helps researchers find relevant articles, recently integrated SCOPUS AI into their Putting AI Into Practice – With Intention AI is more than a buzzword at the UMD Libraries. Across departments, staff and librarians are engaging with artificial intelligence as both a tool and a topic and exploring what it means to use AI tools with care, curiosity and responsibility. At the UMD Libraries, we have a responsibility to make AI literacy accessible for all students and other library users.

AI can also help libraries promote open scholarship, research and data science, which in turn fosters greater collaboration and innovation. The Open Access (OA) movement brings critical research from behind paywalls to the public. Libraries have been at the forefront of the OA movement, and are now positioned to use AI to facilitate the discovery, promotion and use of OA research. For example, institutional repositories like DRUM (the Digital Repository at the University of Maryland) are vast sources of open scholarship including not only published research but the data behind the research, as well as grey literature surrounding subjects across all disciplines. Chatbots and other AI tools help researchers navigate this mountainous collection of information to find what they need. Libraries also use AI to offer researchers the tools they need for data and text mining, analysis of large datasets and customized and automated literature searches. These tools permit even amateur researchers to query enormous datasets and other bodies of information at a scale that was not possible even a few years ago. Librarians teach users how to incorporate these tools into their research, teaching and publishing.

Research libraries have long been a hub for interdisciplinarity and collaboration within higher education. AI provides us with new and powerful tools that maximize our place at the center of the academy. Libraries offer AI-driven services and tools that center us as the campus’ locus for innovation, collaboration and true transdisciplinary research. We use AI to connect scholars across disciplinary boundaries to create new pathways to knowledge. Libraries are using AI to improve our own work, leveraging valuable resources and optimizing operations. AI helps us to enhance and automate many behind-the-scenes tasks, including cataloging, indexing, discovering and providing access at larger scales, improving efficiency and allowing personnel to focus their expertise on specific needs. AI can help us with collection development and management by providing us with tools to analyze usage, fiscal and bibliometric data to make more effective predictions about future acquisition of content, use of physical spaces and allocation of fiscal and human resources. AI is here to stay. Academic libraries are an important part of the educational ecosystem in which AI operates. Librarians and staff at the UMD Libraries are key partners in employing AI technologies to promote the responsible and ethical use of information to advance the public good. We are using AI to facilitate access to information, enhance the research experience and promote open scholarship, and we owe it to our students to prepare them for an AI-centric future. We use AI to connect scholars across disciplinary boundaries to create new pathways to knowledge.