Recent Articles
This is definitely one of the most interesting AI projects that I've been fortunate enough to work on! ScapeGoat, the AI Powered Escape Room for librarians, was demo'ed at the TLN Library Technology Forum in Michigan. This project was the brainchild of two former students of mine: Michael McEvoy of Northville [MI] Public Library and Shauna Quick, Library of Michigan. I helped with prompt design and providing the back-end infrastructure used to run the escape room game and scoring system!
Public libraries can build strong board game collections by selecting durable, engaging titles across age groups (from simple kids’ race/matching games to teen-friendly strategy/party games and adult word, social, and classic tabletop options). The document recommends low-labor processing and practical maintenance—treat games as single “kit” items, reinforce boxes, store flat, use baggies/spare parts, and set clear circulation rules (shorter loan periods, holds, desk returns, and piece checks/fines for missing components).
Community engagement has emerged as a central theme in public librarianship, especially in recent years.
Public libraries in the United States are increasingly expected to go beyond traditional services and actively
collaborate with their communities to identify needs, co-create services, and foster social wellbeing. In
the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, social justice movements, and ongoing digital divides, libraries have
redoubled efforts to engage their communities in meaningful ways. This article provides a comprehensive
Author's Note: This is one of those areas where information has both positive and negative applications. As a former elected library board member for almost a decade, I believe libraries should represent a wide spectrum of voices, perspectives, and experiences. In addition to being against any type of book ban, I always encouraged our library staff to select books from across the political spectrum, even from the end of the spectrum opposite mine. How do we ensure that our selection practices are fair and diverse if we don't measure the results?
In October [2023], we held a free beta workshop series for library grantwriters to test how AI can help write grants. In this article, we'll review some of the lessons learned and provide some sample prompts from our experiments!
General Guidelines for "Chat" AI Usage
Tools like ChatGPT, Bard, and Claude are a special type of artificial intelligence ("AI") that specialize in reading - and generating - human language. These types of AI are called "Large Language Models," or "LLMs."
As AI pragmatists and freedom-to-read advocates, yes, of course we all saw the headlines last week: "Iowa School Uses AI to Ban Books." If you somehow missed the story, it was covered everywhere from local media in Des Moines , education news , and even a brief article in
The Internet definitely changed how Readers Advisory is performed. Websites and services channel the preferences of millions of readers and book purchasers into a river of data. But the Readers Advisory librarian is still critical: instead of helping patrons navigate the stacks in a single library building, RA librarians now help patrons navigate the millions of items and thousands of review and recommendation sources available online. Learn more about our prAIrie Readers Advisory testing program!
The Internet definitely changed how Readers Advisory is performed. Websites and services channel the preferences of millions of readers and book purchasers into a river of data. But the Readers Advisory librarian is still critical: instead of helping patrons navigate the stacks in a single library building, RA librarians now help patrons navigate the millions of items and thousands of review and recommendation sources available online. Learn more about our prAIrie Readers Advisory testing program!
The Internet definitely changed how Readers Advisory is performed. Websites and services channel the preferences of millions of readers and book purchasers into a river of data. But the Readers Advisory librarian is still critical: instead of helping patrons navigate the stacks in a single library building, RA librarians now help patrons navigate the millions of items and thousands of review and recommendation sources available online. Learn more about our prAIrie Readers Advisory testing program!
My colleagues can confirm that I'm the first person to rave about how useful ChatGPT has been for my work. I've been using it since it became available for tons of everyday tasks: writing, coding, strategizing, brainstorming, and more. But a lot of the recent hype around AI tools, especially ordinary use of the basic ChatGPT system from OpenAI, really needs to be taken with a grain of salt!