An AI toolkit for libraries

What is it about?

Now that artificial intelligence (AI) tools are widely used across academic publishing, how can we make informed assessments of these utilities? We need evaluations of AI tools within the context of how they are actually used – by checking with users. Information professionals are ideally placed to carry out these evaluations. This kind of evaluation does not require programming skills; anyone commissioning or managing AI utilities needs only a simple toolkit to understand what questions to ask when evaluating. Much IT development goes into creating an algorithm, but frequently it does not take into account bias in the training set, or an awareness of the context in which the tools are used. This article looks at some areas where AI tools are being used, and provides a checklist for assessment. The goal is not to endorse or to discredit AI, but to make intelligent and informed use of it where appropriate.

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Why is it important?

Many AI tools are available to facilitate the academic research workflow, but are not being used because academics lack the time and knowledge to evaluate them. Information scientists can provide real value to their users by evaluating and recommending AI tools and how to use them.

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