Words Without Thoughts: Generative A.I., Critical Thinking, and Information Retrieval

King Claudius famously questioned the value of “words without thoughts” in Hamlet, yet the hype surrounding “thoughtless” generative A.I. tools portends a revolution in information retrieval. In this preconference workshop, we will consider whether these “thoughtless” technologies are poised to upend our professional practices dramatically, or if they might instead amplify librarians’ and publishing professionals’ existing strategies, frameworks, and workflows.

Despite the breathless coverage of generative A.I. within the popular press and higher education trade publications, we have found that students and information workers alike are less comfortable using these tools than we might expect. We hope that by offering this workshop, we can empower library colleagues to have similar experiences with these tools as we have: excited to use generative A.I. to create learning experiences for students and inspired to leverage these tools to complete tasks at work.

Course URL: https://southernchaptermla.wildapricot.org/CE

Learning Objectives:

• Discuss the fundamentals of how generative A.I. and large language models generate responses to user prompts
• Understand how the principles of creating effective prompts and evaluating the responses produced by generative A.I. can connect to existing information literacy frameworks for strategic searching and resource evaluation
• Describe how generative A.I. technologies can be used to design learning experiences, analyze qualitative data, and streamline workflows with messy quantitative data

Agenda:

10/05/2025
1PM – 4PM (Central)
In-person

• This workshop will feature didactic lectures that introduce fundamentals about the design and under-the-hood operations of generative A.I. technologies.
• Using both technical primers and fun metaphors, we will explore how the structure and design of these tools create utilities and limitations for their use in academic research and writing.
• These didactics will focus on practical applications drawn from our own work in academic libraries that will be directly relevant to health information science professionals across many different professional contexts.

MLA CE Credits: 3