Tools, Truths and Trust: The Library’s Next Chapter – AI

ALIA members: Free

Non-members: $22

Registration via ALIA site

As AI transforms research, education, and knowledge, libraries face urgent questions about their mission and responsibilities. This webinar brings together expert voices to explore how libraries can lead with integrity in the age of AI—shaping institutional strategy, safeguarding scholarly communication, and advancing critical literacy. Join us to examine not just what AI can do, but what libraries should do to uphold their values in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.

This webinar will start with opening statements by three experts, leading to a panel discussion about many challenges and opportunities ahead. Please read their opening statements and biographical notes, and register to participate in thought-provoking discussions.

Facilitator: Suzana Sukovic, LARK’s Co-Convenor

PRESENTERS

ANDREW COX Opportunities and Challenges I think we have four “opportunity-challenges” as a profession around AI. Firstly, to empower users through generative AI by maximising its benefits and controlling its information quality problems. Secondly, to prompt reflection among users about the impact of using AI on their skills. Thirdly, to stimulate debate about the impact of AI on sustainability and other aspects of society. Fourthly, to assist our institutions to respond strategically to complex, multi-layered and rapidly changing AI systems.

FIONA BRADLEY Scholarly Communications There is no doubt about the very real benefits AI methods have brought to specific areas of research—protein folding, spatial modeling, and text analysis among the better-known. However, in other parts of the scholarly communications process, the picture is more mixed. While there have been improvements in literature searching, there is uncertainty about how and when AI may be used in the writing process, along with growing concerns about licensing. More broadly, the scholarly communication ecosystem is grappling with challenges related to AI bots, attribution and provenance, equitable access to tools, and questions about who should control access to knowledge. This presentation will reflect on a selection of recent technological and policy developments and explore how they are impacting researchers.

HEATHER FORD AI Literacy Generative AI outputs and tools are seeping into healthcare, governance, education and science in Australia. This unprecedented change has been fuelled by enormous optimism in the potential economic and productivity benefits, even as the Australian public feels significant anxiety about AI. It is still early days, but we already see the costs of genAI in its enormous environmental toll, its impact on disinformation and the widescale theft of copyrighted works by genAI companies. AI literacy has been suggested as a solution to “smooth” the path to a future dominated by AI (UNESCO) and the library sector is recognised as a key place in which AI literacy should occur. There are many kinds of AI literacy being proposed by various sectors. What kind of AI literacy could or should the library enable?

PRESENTERS’ BIOGRAPHIES

Andrew Cox is a senior lecturer at the School of Information, Journalism and Communication, University of Sheffield, UK. He is convenor of the IFLA Special Interest Group on AI and a former chair of ASIS&T’s AI SIG. As well as author of many recent peer reviewed journal articles on AI and libraries, he is co-author of the 2025 book, AI for Knowledge, published by CRC press. https://sheffield.ac.uk/ijc/people/andrew-cox

Fiona Bradley is Director, Research & Infrastructure at UNSW Sydney and leads the Library’s scholarly communications and repositories, digital and physical infrastructure, and corporate services. Fiona is Chair of the IFLA Open Science & Scholarship Advisory Committee, and a member of the Open Access Australasia Executive Committee. She is currently in the final stages of a PhD at the University of Western Australia in Political Science and International Relations, which explores how transnational advocacy networks engage with regulation related to freedom of access to information.

Heather Ford is a writer, scholar and designer of public knowledge technologies. She researches how digital platforms shape what counts as knowledge and truth and works with libraries, teachers, lecturers and civil society organisations to improve digital and AI literacies for all. She currently works as a Professor in the School of Communication at the University of Technology Sydney.