It's Academic

The submission deadline for PaLRaP is coming soon! Submit your article by August 15th at this link: https://palrap.org/ojs/palrap/about/submissions. Please contact Roseanne Perkins (rperkins@kutztown.edu) for more information.

I recently had the opportunity to do an instruction session for a group of genealogists who were at the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) as part of the GRIP Genealogy Institute. GRIP is an annual week-long in person learning practicum for dedicated genealogists who want to enhance their skills. I was first approached by professional genealogist and class organizer Sunny Morton about presenting in-depth academic history research to her researchers. I was initially hesitant to accept, but I’m glad I did!  

One reason for my hesitation is that as a liaison librarian, I very rarely handle genealogy questions. Since our Archives & Special Collections (A&SC) have an excellent Genealogy Research Guide, we usually direct any inquiries we receive to A&SC. We also have the excellent Documenting Pitt and Historic Pittsburgh sites, both of which have a wealth of genealogical research material. Given that the knowledgeable Carnegie Library Family & Local History Department is a short walk across Schenley Plaza from Pitt’s Hillman Library, I suspect many genealogists do their research there without ever contacting Pitt.  

Prior to my presentation to the group, Gena Philibert-Ortega did a presentation on Historical Context. In it, she encouraged the researchers to incorporate social history into their genealogy. Gena suggested that rather than genealogy being a collection of names and life events, it is at its best when it tells a story. To create that story, one must investigate the social, religious, economic, and political conditions that existed at a moment in the past. Gena demonstrated this by showing a picture of some female ancestors on a California beach and asked questions of it: What is this location? Why might the women have been there? What do the clothes they’re wearing tell us? I was delighted to hear this, because this is the type of thinking that Pitt history profs seek to inculcate in their students. Gena mentioned in passing Evidence Explained, which is a citation style for genealogists. I’m glad I know about that now! Gena concluded the session by showing the researchers how they could use Google Scholar and JStor without library access.  

In preparing for my presentation, one of my first concerns was getting the researchers temporary access to library-licensed eResources. We do offer one-day access to library databases, eBooks, and eJournals for patrons who come to the library and request a guest login. In the past, we’ve had large groups of non-Pitt affiliates show up to the library hoping to get that access; predictably, those instances were chaotic and unproductive. Fortunately, my A&SC colleague David Grinnell was able to work with library IT to get the researchers their codes before the class. The codes were good for their week on campus so they could continue their research while here. During my instruction session, walking everyone through the login process was more time-consuming than I had anticipated. The temporary access codes were random strings of letters and numbers, which made entering them tedious. There were also some system messages which happened during the process which I hadn’t anticipated. 

Given the GRIP researchers were on campus for only a week and were from all over the country, I decided to focus my presentation on the research materials and tools available at most academic research libraries rather than Pitt specifically. While I did show the researchers how to use our discovery layer PittCat, I emphasized that it’s an implementation of Primo, which is used by the majority of academic libraries. I also did demonstrations of my United States History Guide and America: History and Life. (I’ve always liked that database’s ability to search by time period discussed rather than simply publication date.) I concluded by showing the researchers ProQuest Dissertations and Abstracts. A couple of them were delighted to see a dissertation about the town they were researching. I was hoping to have further discussions of their research projects, but we simply ran out of time. Perhaps I’ll have an opportunity next year! Overall, I had a wonderful experience working with researchers from GRIP and will incorporate some of their primary source practices into my undergraduate history information literacy instruction. 

Like many library database collections, mine is centered around EBSCO. We have 28 different EBSCO databases for students to search within EBSCOhost Web, so any changes there have a big impact, and EBSCO has begun adding AI features to its products. There is a new “AI-Assisted Search” option that uses AI to enhance student search results. The latest try by EBSCO to have a Google-like search.

While that is interesting in itself, the features I’m more inclined to discuss are the AI Insights and Ask AI Features. Both of these offer enticing benefits to researchers while also having serious possible downsides for student learning.

Clicking the AI Insights link at the bottom of an article causes a summary of the article to be generated. The summary consists of four or five bullet points that cover key parts of the article. One would hope that these results are accurate because by integrating AI within our library collections we run the risk of allowing in the same inaccurate AI generate information we are trying to warn the public about. Libraries could become synonymous with “AI slop” if our offerings aren’t held to a high standard. I also can’t help but worry that students will avoid reading entire articles and instead rely on summaries. Real learning takes more than a few sentences. It takes some time for a new idea to cast its spell on you.

The AI Ask feature is more exciting. It allows the user to ask AI questions about the article itself. Is the methodology sound? What was the conclusion? How big is the sample size? I find this more beneficial to learning in that it requires the user to think actively to ask questions about the article. The AI becomes like a tutor explaining the article to a student. Of course, this does allow the student to bypass learning how to read complex texts. And the concerns about accuracy remain. Convenience has its price.

These new tools offer the same tradeoffs as other AI tools, convenience at the cost of trustworthiness. The possible replacement of human potential with AI. EBSCO allows these features to be turned on or off. Despite my misgivings mentioned above, I’ve decided to leave them on for now. It’s hard to resist the possibilities they bring.