‘‘ A
T Open Fifth we hold quarterly open dis- cussions, online events for our customers to share ideas and
experiences around set topics. Recently we decided to tackle AI and it was probably our best attended online event of 2025 (which gives you an indi- cation of how interested people are in this topic). One of my colleagues recently went on an AI training course and, after revealing that she worked in libraries, received the usual humorous (and some- what predictable) joke that ‘of course librarians would be the last to adopt AI!’ However, we know this to be far from the truth. Librarians are at the heart of knowledge and information and often have to be at the forefront of understanding new technology so that they can pass this on, and often train (and handhold) their users. What we do find though, is that librarians take a very thoughtful and balanced view of the topic, they don’t want to be thrown AI tools in the expectation it will improve their lives without a clear understanding of where that information has come from and how it is being used.
During the discussion it was interesting to hear how libraries are already experi- menting with AI in their workplaces, with examples such as:
l Chatbots to handle routine library enquiries, such as opening times;
l Automated bibliographic record creation;
l AI-assisted components built into dis- covery tools; l Report generation for LMS data;
l Administration and planning support, such as note and minute-taking.
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Librarians are at the heart of knowledge and information and often have to be at the forefront of understanding new technology so that they can pass this on, and often train (and handhold) their users.
AI in the library: The good, the bad and the ugly
Jonathan Field, founder and managing director of open source library technology firm Open Fifth has written about some of the challenges AI poses to libraries (AI-wars – The libraries fight back –
www.cilip.org.uk/news/712840/AI-Wars- --The-Libraries-Fight-Back.htm) – here he discusses more of the pros and cons AI brings to the sector.
As you can see, these are all well thought through and useful applications of AI. We also heard about how librarians are assist- ing patrons using AI tools. For example, informing students that their reference lists consist solely of hallucinations or being asked to do the fact-checking for AI output. At the darker end, some librar- ies spoke about being asked to use AI to essentially fill gaps in capacity due to staff cuts and freezes – a fear plenty of us have of AI across sectors. For many organisa- tions, AI tools have appeared faster than we can write a policy for them. We really don’t have to think back very far to a time when it wasn’t there. Now we are being bombarded by marketing messages saying ‘Can you afford NOT to have AI?’ As we have been having our own inter- nal discussions, many of the same issues have been raised. For us, there is also the ethical and environmental element as big- ger and bigger servers are required to run these services. There are also commercial pressures from AI companies to use their products, or new AI features stealthily appearing in otherwise non-AI software. Right now, we are being teased into them as access is given freely to train the tools and foster a dependence. However, at some point someone will have to “pay the piper” as the providers expect a return on investment. When asked if they would be prepared to pay for AI, there’s reluctance, value is questioned, and the ethics of (largely US) tech companies is doubted. Many of us are now getting AI as part of pre-existing corporate subscriptions (which won’t be going down in price!), for example, Microsoft Copilot. For me (and many attending the dis- cussion), the ‘Digital Divide’ (https://tinyurl. com/digitaldividedoc) is a big issue. We are widening the gap between users who have
Jonathan Field.
access to or can pay for personal subscrip- tions for technology, now including AI tools, and those who can’t. There are still many in society who either can’t afford or aren’t comfortable using technology. Related to this, there was a recent and very interesting article by James Marriott entitled ‘The dawn of the post-literate society’ (
https://tinyurl.com/dawnofpostliterate). In this, he argues that the rise of the smartphone revolution and the decline of deep reading are creating a “post-literate society” where people lose their capacity for critical, analytical thinking, which, in turn, could have serious consequences for democracy and culture. I’ve heard similar concerns raised by people working within the library sector about AI tools.
Copyright theft? You may have seen our article last year on fighting AI bots (
https://openfifth.co.uk/ fighting-the-ai-bots/). This described the ‘arms race’ for LLMs to get as much metadata as
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