It's Academic

Dear Colleagues, 

I am conducting a research study about librarians’ individual values and decisions to use or refuse to use generative artificial intelligence. The aim is to help explain differences in librarian attitudes and intentions regarding generative artificial intelligence by examining how these may relate to individual values.

You are invited to participate if you currently work in an academic library and: 

• hold an MLIS/MLS degree 
• or your primary job responsibilities include providing reference, instruction, cataloging, collection development, or other information services.  

Participation consists of completing an anonymous online survey that takes approximately 10-15 minutes. The survey includes questions about your personal values, your views on generative AI, and basic background information. Your responses will be completely anonymous. No identifying information will be collected, and results will be reported only in aggregate. 

Survey Link: https://millersville.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_1RJQCCtsDLHb79k 

Your participation is entirely voluntary. You may skip any question or stop the survey at any time. There are no penalties for choosing not to participate. 

Generative artificial intelligence is influencing many aspects of our professional responsibilities. Your participation will help create a deeper understanding of how our individual values inform our decisions about acceptance or refusal of generative artificial intelligence in our profession. 

If you have any questions about the study, please feel free to contact: 
Greg Szczyrbak, MSLIS 
Millersville University 
Email: greg.szczyrbak@millersville.edu 

In 2024 the Department of Justice added new rules to the Americans with Disabilities Act. These new rules change the requirements for accessibility from a just-in-time standard for digital materials to a requirement that all digital documents intended for public use be accessible the moment they are made available. This is a huge shift for libraries and higher education as a whole. These changes must be in place by April 24th, 2026. In practice the summer semester will be the first complete semester after this change. Failure to comply can lead to lawsuits.

I’ve been placed in charge of implementing these changes at my library and so I thought I would share some advice.

• These rules apply to all common materials used by employees, the public, and students but make a priority to emphasize items used most often by students.
• There are exceptions to this rule, which can be seen in this article.
• Familiarize yourself with making PDF, Word, PPT, HTML, and Excel files accessible since these are the most common file types. All of these have features to make files accessible.
• Assess whether you can replace PDF files with other file types. PDF files are the most difficult to make accessible by far. For text documents, HTML or Word are much better.
• Emphasize simplicity in documents. The more complex they are the more difficult it is to make them accessible.
• Contact vendors whose software your library uses and ensure their materials are accessible.
• Require staff to attend workshops on accessibility so they can contribute to these efforts.
• Create a plan to periodically check documents for accessibility going forward. This is not a one time change but something that must be standard practice.
• Experiment with AI tools to make documents accessible. My results have been mixed so far but I believe AI has great potential to help make documents accessibile.

I hope this list has been helpful. If you have any questions about accessibility, I’d be happy to offer more advice. Contact me at akirby@pennhighlands.edu