It's Academic

You are cordially invited to participate in the Summer 2025 series of the Virtual Journal Club, sponsored by the College & Research Division of the Pennsylvania Library Association!

Please use this form to indicate which topic(s) you would be interested in reading about in the fall series, as well as indicate your scheduling preferences.

You are welcome to attend one, two, or all three of the meetings to discuss the readings. If you are interested in participating, please feel free to sign up – there is no cost and no commitment beyond your time to read and discuss the articles.

Thanks to everyone who participated in our Spring 2025 series on collection management, focused on weeding!

Please feel free to reach out with any questions.

Thank you, and have a great day!
Melissa

Like many librarians, I’m still trying to come to grips with using AI.  While I have my concerns that AI will have a negative impact on learning (and perhaps humanity in general), its presence can’t be ignored, so I have been experimenting with it consistently.  To keep AI on my mind, I always have a tab for Co-Pilot open on my PC.  I regularly pepper it with questions ranging from the simple (What did Voltaire say about defining terms and debate?), to the more serious (What caused the Dancing Plague in the 16^th century?), to the professionally useful (create some CSS code that will make all links on my website underlined).  Each little query helps me understand AI a bit more and get a better idea of how to use it.  I can also see its limitations.  A question about citing a website led to an incorrect answer.  Requests to create an image of the United States Constitution led to some hilarious misspellings (AI struggles to create images with proper spelling).  I can also see its biases based on its responses.  For example, in one class, I asked AI to respond with the benefits and downsides of AI, only to be given a list of the benefits of AI with no downsides.  It was a great example of bias for the students to see.

Like anything else, practice does make perfect.  So, if you want to improve your use of AI, I highly suggest daily use, from the most mundane tasks all the way to more complex uses that may save you time on some project in your work.  Little by little, you’ll learn how to properly use AI.