New Voices RGU Student Series 2025 – Clara Buttigieg

Category: RGU Student Series 2025

In the 2025 New Voices Student Series, the CILIPS Students & New Professionals Community will be sharing the views of Robert Gordon University students from the MSc in Information and Library Studies.

With special thanks to Dr Konstantina Martzoukou, Teaching Excellence Fellow and Associate Professor, for organising these thought-provoking contributions.

Today’s blog post author is Clara Buttigieg. Clara is a Geography teacher with over 10 years of experience and has been a teacher librarian at a public secondary school for the past year. She is currently pursuing an MSc in Information and Library Studies to deepen her expertise in the field. In her free time, Clara enjoys reading, trying out new recipes, and going on long walks with her two dogs.

From keyword searching – retrieving content from indexed sources – to prompt engineering – using natural, conversational language, interactive and dynamic conversations. Discuss how Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) is transforming the process of information seeking and use. Is there a role for information professionals?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been around for quite some time, whether it’s through auto-correct or text prediction on our phones or using map apps to avoid tolls (Deschenes and McMahon, 2024). However, Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) is relatively new, with ChatGPT having been launched in November 2022 (IFLA, 2023), becoming extremely popular immediately, and setting a record for being the fastest-growing consumer application (Hu, 2023).

How is information seeking changing?

“Generative AI refers to deep-learning models that can take raw data … and ‘learn’ to generate statistically probable outputs when prompted.” (Martineau, 2023). These tools have had a direct impact on how academic research is conducted (Deschenes and McMahon, 2024). Gen AI is a natural language chat interface, meaning that when one does research on Gen AI, the prompts and answers flow like a natural conversation. This encourages users to ask more follow-up questions and be more expressive. This is a change from the traditional way of doing research, where one inputs keywords into a search engine and filters through results to find the required data.

While keyword searching allows researchers to browse, stumble upon, and learn new, unrelated information, GenAI delivers focused answers directly related to the research query. This is taking away the researchers “learning and serendipity” (Hersh, 2024, p. 2160). Hence, while automation might replace some tasks, it risks undermining the unplanned discoveries and context that information professionals provide.

This raises the question: “Is the information professional’s job becoming obsolete and being replaced by automation?” According to a study carried out by Frey and Osborne (2017), there is a 65% chance librarians may be replaced by automation in the next decade.  Change is inevitable, and the growing popularity of Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Claude threatens to replace information professionals if precautions are not taken.

What is the information professional’s new role?

Information professionals can help researchers by assisting them in choosing the best Gen AI tool for their research. At the same time, they can also promote ethical behaviour in using such tools. They also have the knowledge and skills to filter through unwanted research, skills that can be passed on to academic researchers.

LLMs can be used to generate research papers. ChatGPT was used in an experiment by Maya Bodnick to present papers to professors at Harvard University and the resulting grades were between B- and A (Bodnick, 2023). Gen AI tools are much faster than keyword searching, data collection and writing research papers, which is why these tools are increasing in popularity. However, researchers may not realise the downsides that such tools may have.

One of the main downsides to GenAI is the inaccurate results known as ‘hallucinations’. These are created when LLMs “don’t know when they don’t know” (Hersh, 2024). This is where the information professional’s role becomes important; to guide researchers in recognizing fake information.

Another downside is that GenAI tools cannot understand the context of your research question and may therefore not generate the results that you had in mind. In this case, the information professional helps the researcher by guiding them in asking the right question to get the best results.

LLMs are continuously evolving, and what is being researched about them today may be obsolete by tomorrow. These systems are evolving to become more powerful and overcome the disadvantages that they currently face. For this reason, it is even more important that the information professional stays aware of such changes and is always ready to adapt and integrate such tools in their work. Libraries can still offer their support with “data discovery, copyright issues, data management, and data preservation” (IFLA, 2023, p.5). However, most importantly, information professionals must ensure that Gen AI tools are used “effectively, ethically, and transparently” (Lo, 2023, p. 211).

References

Bodnick M. (2023) ChatGPT goes to Harvard. Available at: https://www.slowboring.com/p/chatgpt-goes-to-harvard (Accessed: 23 November 2024).

Deschenes A. and McMahon M. (2024) ‘A Survey on Student Use of Generative AI Chatbots for Academic Research’, Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, 9(2), pp. 2-22. Available at: https://doi.org/10.18438/eblip30512

Frey C.B. and Osborne M. A. (2017) ‘The future of employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerisation?’, Technological Forecasting & Social Change, 114, pp. 254 – 280. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2016.08.019

Hersh W. (2024) ‘Search still matters: information retrieval in the era of generative AI’, Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 31(9), pp. 2159–2161. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/jamia/ocae014

Hu, (2023) ChatGPT sets record for fastest-growing user base – analyst note. Available at: https://www.reuters.com/technology/chatgpt-sets-record-fastest-growing-user-base-analyst-note-2023-02-01/  (Accessed: 23 November 2024).

IFLA (2023) Developing a library strategic response to Artificial Intelligence. Available at: https://www.ifla.org/g/ai/developing-a-library-strategic-response-to-artificial-intelligence/  (Accessed: 23 November 2024).

Lo, L (2023) ‘My new favorite research partner is an AI’, College & Research Libraries News, 84 (6), pp 209-211. Available at: https://doi.org/10.5860/crln.84.6.209

Martineau K. (2023) What is generative AI? Available at: https://research.ibm.com/blog/what-is-generative-AI  (Accessed: 23 November 2024).