The Institutional Alignment Challenge: Grappling with AI in Collections

With the rise of publicly available generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools, librarians have been working to understand their impact on library-licensed e-resources while ensuring users receive accurate, timely guidance on privacy, intellectual property and other usage considerations. In response to this challenge, the University of Toronto Libraries (UTL) formed its Collections AI Response Team, to bring together expertise across collections and scholarly communications units and to strategize on how to best mitigate the risks posed by these tools to our institution, its members and the environment, while avoiding the potential stifling of innovative uses of these technologies by our community. So far, the Team’s efforts have focused on three areas: Collaboration and alignment with institution-wide working groups developing UofT’s response to GenAI ; Outreach to instructors and researchers via workshops and consultations, with a focus on licensing and IP ownership; the creation of our GenAI Tool Navigator, to gather and proliferate information about GenAI tools as they become available to users. As our institution’s approach to the ethical and practical implications of GenAI tools continue to evolve and reflect the diversity of approaches to GenAI within it, our Team has had to anticipate what the role of Collections should be in this conversation. The presentation will share our insights from this work so far, including the increased saliency of issues of privacy and openness in this work, as well as share our plans for future initiatives in this area.