Human Responsibility in the Age of AI by Kasia Chmielinski: While there are some fears about AI – real ones include risks of bias – human intervention is possible. The Data Nutrition Project aims to show some “ingredients” in the data, just like a food nutrition label does. There is a section that is icons and labels designed to be read at a glance plus a section with more details (visual at slide 26). That intervention might have positive ripple effects: a cookie-baker might make more nutritious cookies knowing that the label is going to show what is in it. Kasia said that librarians have a role and gave tips such as asking vendors about their training model. I highly recommend spending the time on this presentation.

Refrains heard: AI; accessibility (some progress reported and tools shared – good info from U. of Tennessee and NC LIVE); lack of capacity couched as burnout (librarians are leaving the profession for better paying jobs); and automations/scripts with holdings (KBART), usage stats (COUNTER), and dashboards. The primary solution offered for burnout was “you can only control you” so take care of yourself by setting boundaries and not trying to do it all. Noticeably absent: linked data, which is the subject of some Core Interest Group Week sessions this week (covering the move towards a hybrid MARC/linked open data environment that Alma and Folio are both embracing).

There were at least a couple of sessions about developing knowledge, sensible after last year’s observation of lots of job openings for e-resources librarians (due to some retiring, some leaving the profession). Open Negotiation Education for Academic Libraries (oneal-project.org) aims to help library workers understand how to negotiate by creating an OER course after conducting IMLS-funded exploratory research to prepare. Vendors as well as librarians need better understanding of negotiation, since there is turnover in sales representatives too. They are hoping to launch the curriculum later in March 2024. It is designed for beginner to advanced – everyone should be able to learn something. At the U. of Toronto, they tried a Library Juice e-resource cataloging class to bring up knowledge internally but it wasn’t really helpful to their work because like us, they are primarily using the Alma Community Zone. They recorded themselves to provide video training, plus created more documentation, but participants noted the big problem of documentation outdating quickly as Alma changes quickly. Folks also noted that it takes a lot of time to update documentation when adding links for Alma documentation. (At ZSR, we’ve learned that it is very easy to Google for Alma documentation.)

Carol Cramer, Kate Silton, and Kathy Shields also attended, so I’ll leave some room for them to report. Kate and Kathy gave a wonderful pre-recorded (“on-demand”) session. This has become my favorite conference, full of practical how-to sessions along with the bigger picture.