Leading from the Front, Reclaiming the Center: Articulating a Library Response to the AI Challenge

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the disruptive force of the decade. It is already having a massive impact on all sectors of the economy and society, and is set to transform the everyday lives of professions and communities worldwide. We have seen a huge surge in publications on the subject in the past five years, reporting the thoughts, feelings, and actions of individuals and organizations across the globe. Generative AI (GenAI) threatens to marginalize library, information and knowledge workers, jeopardize research integrity, and diminsh student learning. It also offers an unprecedented opportunity for our values-based profession to move center stage, advance critical literacies,strengthen data stewardship, and promote epistemic equity. Our purpose here is to guide library practitioners through the growing literature on AI and related technologies in order to inform their deliberations on how to respond to the challenges presented both as individual workers and as service organizations. Library thought leaders and pioneer practitioners have shared valuable information, advice, and guidance on the topic, but there are gaps in professional scholarship that point us toward related literature on labor economics, organizational behavior, and social psychology to complement our learning from library and information science and higher education. The presentation will begin with a selection of orientating definitions of key terms and concepts, next take a broad view of the impact of AI on jobs and tasks, and then a deep dive into the implications for roles and skills as processes and workflows are enhanced or reimagined. It will cover both institutional reactions and personal attitudes to AI from multiple competing perspectives, before moving to AI thinking and practice in academic libraries, including emerging ideas on strategies and tactics to position the library at the forefront of AI activity in their communities. Rather than providing a blueprint or roadmap for AI implementation, the focus will be on models and frameworks for AI adoption to facilitate selection and application of approaches to fit local conditions and surroundings.

The course will cover a wide range of content and perspectives, drawing on multidisciplinary literature and international scholarship covering labor economics, organizational behavior, and social psychology in addition to information science, higher education, and academic librarianship. It will highlight the ethical issues surrounding AI and argue that librarians have a key responsibility within their institutions to promote the critical, ethical, and responsible use of AI through participation in AI governance and policy development, and leadership in AI education and literacy development. The presentation will also showcase a strategic framework for integrating GenAI into library operations in a way that aligns with and advances the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The course will use a synchronous modality of instruction, taking the form of an interactive lecture with opportunities for reflection, questions, and discussion during the session. Four handouts will be provided in advance for reference during the class and further study after completion: a glossary of technical terms for 21C tech and AI transformations; an agentic AI SWOT analysis, supplemented by a comparative analysis of the problem-solving capabilities and constraints of human actors and digital agents; summaries of the new hybrid fusion skillset for human-AI collaboration and the repurposed core transferable skillset for human-agent-robot coworking; and a reference list covering 100+ items cited in the presentation, indicating recommended reading from the library literature. The following three articles will be suggested as optional pre-course readings to participants who want to orientate their thinking or learn more about the topic in advance:

Kolbjørnsrud, V. (2024). Designing the intelligent organization: Six principles for human-AI collaboration. California Management Review, 66(2), 44-64. https://doi.org/10.1177/00081256231211020 [25 min. read]
Sætra, H. S. (2026). The rise of the research automaton: Science as process or product in the era of generative AI? AI & Society, 41(3), 1865–1879. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-025-02557-7 [35 min. read]
Zagami, J. (2026). AI refusal in higher education: The right to refuse, the duty to understand and the diagnostic value of non-use. Higher Education Research & Development. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2026.2694409 [15 min. read]

Course URL: https://www.fhsla.org/

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

• Recall and identify emergent principles and practices of working with AI in organizations in order to form new mental models of an AI-empowered library
• Recognize and interpret different individual responses to AI in order to form constructive relationships in classrooms, the workplace, and the wider community
• Review and analyze new and repurposed skillsets for co-working with AI in order to inform curriculum development for AI education of library staff and other audiences
• Review and evaluate examples of library AI strategies described in the literature in order to inform strategy formation and tactics deployment in their workplace

Agenda

The one-hour course will be delivered as an interactive lecture with opportunities for reflection, questions, and discussion during the session. The instructor will pause periodically and invite participants to reflect on the material covered, raise any questions or concerns, and comment on the implications for their practice. The session will be broken down into three approximately equal segments of 15-20 minutes each, moving through the content outlined above, starting with orientating definitions and descriptions of AI from differing perspectives, followed by its impact on jobs, tasks, roles, and skills in organisations. The final part of the session will focus on the impact of AI on core functions in libraries (collection development, user services, research support, learning support) and emerging ideas about how AI and related technologies can be used to facilitate the strategic repositioning of libraries.

MLA CE Credits: 1