As AI continues to redefine the academic research environment, many library staff continue to feel left behind, fatigued from participating in a volatile AI conversation in which the workflows, practices, and values that shape library instruction must be constantly reimagined. This leaves many stuck in a reactive mindset, trying to keep up with the conversation by grappling with broad, monolithic questions that don’t often have satisfying answers: “How do I incorporate the topic of AI into instruction? How do I have conversations with students and faculty about where AI belongs in research? What changes about scholarly publishing in this new research landscape, and where do I fit in?” While these questions are valuable for making sense of library instruction against the backdrop of AI, their general nature does not always enable library staff to take control of the AI conversation in a way that is sustainable, actionable, and grounded in library practices here and now.
In this workshop, participants will work collaboratively to identify concrete footholds through which to move away from this space of general, reactive questioning and toward proactive engagement that situates AI within library instruction, rather than the other way around. Participants will reflect on their own positionality with respect to AI, including the assumptions, opinions, and experiences that shape individual perspectives on where AI belongs in research.
Then, participants will map out a menu of high-, medium-, and low-level interventions that position the AI conversation in what libraries know best — about topics ranging from information literacy practices to student orientations to the research process, from citation and data attribution to copyright and intellectual property — and that offer enduring strategies for activating libraries’ expertise in the AI conversation. In the process, participants will surface ways to help themselves and one another feel more empowered in interactions with students and faculty when asserting the ongoing relevance of libraries in an AI-mediated research environment.
Speaker
Steven Geofrey (they/them) is an Associate Teaching Professor and Coordinator of Creative Coding at Northeastern University (College of Arts, Media and Design). As a research-practitioner in data, design, and computation, Steven’s practice uses Value-Sensitive Design as framework, code as material, and design as method to examine the relationship between representations of data and information, interpretation as an act of knowledge production, and how meaning is constructed in the space between. In their teaching, Steven teaches courses on human-centered AI, data visualization, information design, creative coding, web programming, and statistics. Beyond Northeastern, Steven is a Senior Researcher and Design Lead with Partnering Lab, an interdisciplinary creative practice research lab which studies the ethics of somatic partnering and physical interaction. Steven was previously a Senior Research Scientist with Project Information Literacy, a nonprofit research institute that studied how students engage with the news and media literacy. Steven also maintains a freelance practice in digital humanities.
In their work, Steven has collaborated with interdisciplinary researchers and practitioners such as the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, the lab of Watanave Hidenori at The University of Tokyo, the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project and NuLawLab at Northeastern University, and the Digital Scholarship Group at Harvard University. Steven was previously a Front-End Developer with the Growth Lab at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, Designer in Residence for the Center for Design at Northeastern University, and Data Analytics/Visualization Specialist in the Northeastern University Library. Steven received their B.A., summa cum laude, in chemistry and Asian studies from St. Olaf College. They received their M.S. in molecular biophysics and biochemistry at Yale University. In the time between, they lived in Kyoto, Japan as a Fulbright Fellow, conducting computational biophysics research at Kyoto University.