library instruction

All About My AI Literacy Course

In my first ACRLog post, Teaching AI as an Anti-AI Librarian, I shared how I was approaching the task of teaching an AI literacy course as an anti-AI librarian. For my final post, I’d like to share a follow-up (which a few people have requested—thank you!) sharing a bit of practical information about how I organized the course and reflecting briefly on my first experience solo teaching a credit course.

Getting Started

My course was LIB 1100 AI, Algorithms, and (Y)our Future, a one-credit elective about AI created by my predecessor. 17 students enrolled, and we met twice a week for 50 minutes during the second half of the semester. Because this was a one-credit elective, I knew I couldn’t treat it like a survey course; there just wasn’t time. This course also attracted students from across the university: future designers, teachers, accountants, journalists, lawyers, and more. I wanted the course to be meaningful to everyone, regardless of their disciplinary background or preexisting level of knowledge about AI. For these reasons, I decided to focus on building skills over mastering content.

Before we could begin skill-building, however, I spent the first couple weeks of the course ensuring all students had a common, basic understanding of how AI works, which included in-depth discussions of hallucinations and algorithmic bias. Part of me worried that students might find this phase of the course too elementary. While a few certainly did, I was surprised by the feedback I received.¹ Several students—frequent ChatGPT users—told me they had no idea generative AI tools could produce incorrect or biased information. Others shared that they did not know the term AI included anything other than chatbots; for example, they were shocked to learn how AI technology is involved in facial recognition, dynamic pricing, and resume screening. Most did not know that generative AI works by predicting what is most likely to come next. In general, I found that my students either a) thought they knew more about AI than they did, or b) felt completely lost in AI information overload, unsure how to tell fact from fiction.

As an information literacy librarian, this is where I feel I can make the biggest impact. I want to equip my students with critical thinking, research, and communication skills that will help them thoughtfully and ethically navigate a world being radically reshaped by AI. When they finish my course, I want them to feel empowered to make informed decisions about their personal AI use, investigate AI issues that matter to them, and engage in productive civic dialogue about AI. I believe these skills are more essential to our individual and collective humanity than technology-specific skills like prompt engineering or computer programming. On a practical level, they’re also more evergreen. As AI models evolve faster and faster, technical knowledge about how to engineer prompts or which tool to use quickly becomes outdated. On the other hand, critical thinking skills retain their value as long as we live.

The AI Question

On the first day of class, I laid out these five learning objectives to help set student expectations:

After taking this class, I will be able to . . .

Explain the fundamentals of how AI works.
Evaluate the potential risks and benefits of using AI in different situations.
Understand and analyze multiple perspectives on AI issues.
Discuss AI issues with others.
Independently explore AI issues of interest to me.

You may notice that none of these objectives necessarily involve using AI. I was upfront with students about the fact that I would not ask them to use AI in our classroom. There are already several UNI courses that teach students how to use different AI tools; instead, our class would center around readings and small-group discussions. I expected a few students would drop after hearing this, but none did.

I decided to run a no-AI AI class for a couple of reasons. First, as I’ve already discussed, I truly believe I can best serve my students in an AI-dominated world by helping them develop habits of compassionate communication, curiosity, and critical thinking, particularly when it comes to information and technology issues, and these skills are best developed without relying, in full or in part, on generative AI. Second, I have major ethical concerns with the use of AI in the library classroom, particularly given our field’s values-driven commitments to patron privacy; intellectual freedom; copyright; delivering information with integrity; and opposing racial, gender, and economic inequality. These values are fundamentally incompatible with the design of consumer-focused generative AI tools. Our field has not always acted in line with these values, but I don’t believe generative AI is the solution. I believe it further entrenches inequality—including information inequality. I cannot welcome it in my library classroom.

The Nitty-Gritty

So . . . if students weren’t using AI, what did they actually do during our class meetings?

Since I chose to teach LIB 1100 in-person, I wanted to maximize one of the most important benefits of in-person instruction: the opportunity to have face-to-face discussions. Each week, I assigned a couple of short news articles or videos on AI issues I thought would be relevant to all students, regardless of discipline (e.g. AI in college admissions, Flock cameras, data centers in our state). I chose readings that a) presented multiple points of view on the topic and b) explored both the potential risks and benefits of using AI. When we gathered for class, we discussed the week’s readings in small groups. Throughout the course, we also practiced asking questions about AI, using basic search strategies to find more information, and fact-checking the answers we found. For our last class, students located a news article on an AI topic of their choice and shared their learnings with their peers in a five-minute lightning talk.

Our in-class discussions were highly structured. I hoped this approach would focus student conversation and help the idea of “discussion” feel more approachable for nervous students; generally speaking, I believe this theory was borne out in student feedback. Here are a few methods I used to structure our discussions:

I chose the discussion groups. I tried to place a mix of “strong” and “weak” discussers in each group while still changing the groups every day, so students had the opportunity to hear from all their classmates.
I used preset discussion formats. My favorites are conver-stations, philosophical chairs, and jigsaw, but I also used think-pair-share and snowball.
Discussions consisted of multiple rounds, which were no more than 10 minutes each. Each round had a distinct purpose and built on the previous round.
- For example: The purpose of Round 1 might be “Let’s make sure we’re all on the same page about the facts of this article.” Students define key terms and organize a timeline of events. Round 2 might be “Let’s discuss the risks and benefits of using AI in this way.” Students analyze the different perspectives presented in the article, consider what they would do, and share how the issue could apply to their own lives. Round 3 might be “What should we do in the future?” Students discuss how lawmakers, developers, and leaders in their discipline could respond to the issue.
I provided private, constructive feedback on students’ discussion participation at the midpoint of the course, encouraging good habits and suggesting ways to improve.
Finally, I eased students into the practice of discussion by starting the course with short, low-stakes discussion activities. For example, our first discussion was a think-pair-share in which students brainstormed ideas for our classroom agreement. By the time we began discussing readings in week 2, students were already somewhat familiar with the experience of small-group conversation.

I initially worried students would find the frequent small-group discussions boring. I didn’t use any interactive tools like Mentimeter, Padlet, or Kahoot! (though I’d like to try some this fall). We didn’t play with AI hands-on, for reasons already discussed. We simply sat down in small groups and had highly structured, intentional conversations about AI for two hours a week. When I began receiving student feedback, I was surprised. Students consistently expressed that they enjoyed and looked forward to our in-class discussions; they shared that the structured discussion style helped them learn, they loved getting to hear a variety of opinions from their classmates, and they appreciated the opportunities to direct their own learning.

When I discussed my student feedback with a colleague, she pointed out that many of my students belonged to lecture-heavy disciplines or were at an early, lecture-heavy phase in their college education. This might have been one of their first chances to take a small course in which they could get to know their classmates, share their perspective, and direct their own learning. As I’ve reflected further on LIB 1100, I’ve also begun to wonder if my slower, discussion-focused approach might have resonated with students due to the particular topic of this course.

A Few Final Reflections

AI often feels like something that’s happening to us. You’re told to use AI in your classroom. Suddenly, Flock cameras pop up along your route to work. Every day, we’re buried deeper under an avalanche of stories about job loss, new cybersecurity threats, and environmental devastation. It can feel like everything is spiraling out of control.

But whatever helplessness we might feel about AI, I think our students often feel it more intensely. They are less grounded in the memory of what life was like before 2022; they will graduate into a world already reshaped by AI. Many of them feel there is something wrong with what’s happening, but they also understand there’s no going back. This is the only world they’ll ever know.

In this context, it’s important to carve out space to slow down—especially in the classroom. Students are under immense pressure to “keep up” and “not fall behind,” but in order for them to develop into thoughtful, creative, and compassionate graduates, they need time to breathe. In spite of—or because of—how fast-moving and overwhelming the issue of AI can be, it’s critical that we support students in slowing down, reflecting with intention, developing and sharing their perspectives, and learning from others with grace. Student autonomy in learning matters, especially with an issue like AI, where they may often feel like their autonomy has been stripped away. I believe my students resonated deeply with these aspects of LIB 1100, and I hope I can continue to foster a reflective, generous, and impactful learning environment for my students this fall.

Some Further Reading

If you’re interested in teaching about AI, I hope this post has been useful or thought-provoking in some way. I’m sharing how I approached LIB 1100 because I’ve been asked about this topic quite a bit over the last year, but this is only one teaching method out of many. I’m always learning from other teachers and librarians. To conclude this post, I’d like to share just a few perspectives that have informed my work in the hopes they may be helpful to others as well:

Allison, Leslie, and Tiffany DeRewal. “Where Knowledge Begins? Generative Search, Information Literacy, and the Problem of Friction.” Critical AI 2, no. 2 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1215/2834703X-11556038.

Camarillo, Lauren A. “Squinting Through the Dawn of AI: Embedding Algorithmic Literacy Principles in Library Instruction.” In Democratizing Knowledge + Access + Opportunities: The Proceedings of the ACRL 2025 Conference, edited by Dawn Mueller. Association of College and Research Libraries, 2025. https://www.ala.org/sites/default/files/2025-03/SquintingThroughtheDawnofAI.pdf.

Ellis, Elizabeth and Amanda Kaufman. “Diving Beneath the Surface: Incorporating Critical AI Literacy in Library Instruction.” Presentation, LOEX Conference, Norfolk, VA, May 8, 2026. https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1R9e1S_x1Mc-0Xl3rz6dcY8nZuPLgvDMcwQDnAmERnvc.

Illingworth, Sam. “What Is Critical AI Literacy?” Slow AI, February 13, 2026. https://theslowai.substack.com/p/what-is-critical-ai-literacy.

TILT Higher Ed. https://www.tilthighered.com/.

Slater, Kay. “Against AI: Critical Refusal in the Library.” Library Trends 73, no. 4 (2025): 588–608. https://doi.org/10.1353/lib.2025.a968497.

Notes

When I refer to “student feedback” throughout this post, I’m aggregating feedback received through in-class minute papers; graded learning reflections; three anonymous Google Forms surveys I administered throughout the course; my final, university-administered student evaluations; and students speaking directly with me. ↩︎

Developing a Teaching Style… In Style!

A commonality among this year’s first-year academic librarian bloggers was the daunting task of standing in front of a class for the first time. We were curious to discuss the similarities and differences that exist between becoming a teacher for the first time in a post-secondary setting and how we developed our style over our first year as librarians.

Eleanor: Collaboration is key

I never knew what to say when asked to describe my teaching style in a job interview. When I taught one-shots during my MLIS, I simply hodge-podged together various activities I’d enjoyed as an undergraduate. Regardless of whether it was effective or ineffective, what I was doing didn’t have the level of intentionality required to be called a “style.” What is a teaching style? I wondered. How will I know if I have one?

But over the last year, I’ve gained experience navigating the classroom and developed confidence in myself as an instructor. Collaboration and conversation with other faculty have been key to my development as a teacher, which is why I think this is a valuable conversation for the FYALs to have together. Through co-teaching experiences and working through teaching challenges together with my colleagues, I was exposed to a wide variety of ideas about teaching. I began to understand what makes my approach to teaching similar to or different from theirs and develop the language to articulate why a lesson felt right (or didn’t!).

For example, I was introduced to TILT Higher Ed (Transparency in Learning and Teaching) through the new faculty colloquium at UNI, and I experienced it in action during my first semester as a co-teacher. TILT is a teaching framework that emphasizes radical transparency in teaching methods, classroom expectations, course design, and more. This helps level the playing field between all students, which is especially important in the library classroom. As many public and school libraries are forced to close or reduce hours due to drastic budget cuts, our students enter college less familiar than ever with libraries and research strategies.

But ultimately, the most important thing about my teaching style isn’t any specific framework, technique, or activity. It’s the fact that now, I’ve developed intentionality in my approach to teaching. That means I can actively evaluate, critique, and grow my own teaching. My teaching style will not be static over the course of my career. It must evolve in tandem with my students, my course material, my institution, and the wider cultural context in which I teach.

Lisa: Take-away materials & take-away friends

When first jumping into the role of an academic librarian, it was overwhelming just to think about even getting through that one, two, maybe three hours that I had in front of a class. Especially as someone who used to have a fear of public speaking and still has remnants of that anxiety in different caveats of daily life, teaching alone as a fresh graduate seemed like a tall ask. Now that almost three semesters’ worth of teaching have passed, I feel that I have really relaxed into the role thanks to different pockets of fun and confidence that I’ve identified to lean into when teaching.

Something I try to think about when I am teaching are the tangible take-away points for students so that they can leave the session with a better sense of their research topic, the library, and other new intersecting thoughts. This might also be due to the fact that I support subject areas in STEM with students who are looking to finish school with professional careers rather than learn about the ins and outs of the research lifecycle. Relevant examples, recent cases, real-life scenarios, and pain points from previous students are ways I try to incorporate discipline-specific needs into traditional information literacy sessions.

At the undergraduate level, especially in senior courses, when students are attending classes for the sole purpose of graduating, there are often instances when my energy is not being reciprocated. To alleviate this tension, something I started doing at the beginning of each session was to bring a bit of myself. Whether it be through a photo or an analogy comparing information literacy to Korean food, incorporating myself into the session helped me to become more familiar in a new environment while allowing students to open up to me and each other as well. Another strategy that I love are icebreakers. I love doing quick ones where students must hold up a number to identify themselves with a meme or submit answers to an interactive website (wooclap, kahoot, etc.).

An aspect that I took for granted in university was the social aspect of learning, whether it was participation in class, group work, presentations, or conversations. To utilize this unique aspect to the maximum, I have fun adding in activities that incorporate a social aspect in all of my sessions, whether they are one-shots, recurring workshops, or consultations. In my mind, if students didn’t get anything from the actual session, they can at least emerge out of it with having interacted with one new classmate, shared their research topic with a friend, found a research partner, or reinforced their classroom community further. One of my favourite parts of my role in the library is witnessing the growth of students throughout the year, and teaching is so exciting because it really is the first step in developing that relationship.

M: Gaining confidence in the classroom

When I first started library school, I didn’t envision myself teaching much. However, as I made my way through classes, I started to realize that if I wanted to be an academic librarian who primarily works with students, there was basically no way to avoid teaching. Like Lisa, I haven’t always felt the most comfortable with public speaking, although I’ve worked hard to be better at it and feel more confident. I decided that I would have to find a way to figure out how to be, at minimum, an average teacher if I wanted to continue on the academic librarian path that I’d chosen. There are three things that have helped me work on being a more confident and effective teacher:

First, in library school, I was able to take a course on Library Instruction. That’s the first place where I was asked to think about my teaching style and where I had to write a teaching statement. I haven’t looked at that statement since I started in my current position, but I plan to go back to it this summer and will be interested to see what’s changed and what’s stayed the same. Library Instruction helped me think about teaching as more than just lecturing students – students can also learn through back and forth dialogue, think-pair-shares, and other interactive methods. Since I only teach graduate students, I’m still working on how I can most effectively bring those forms of instruction into my teaching, but I know I’ll figure it out. Big thanks to my professor for this class, Dr. Rawson, for her own incredible teaching.

Second, I’ve had the opportunity both in library school and in my current job to observe instruction sessions led by other librarians. Those experiences have been invaluable in helping me figure out what works or doesn’t work in front of a class, what I currently do well, and what I can improve on. Sitting in on those sessions, especially when I then have time to talk to the librarians afterwards and ask them questions, has been a fantastic way to learn. I would encourage anyone to find opportunities to do this – if it’s not built in to the structure of your library school program or current position, ask the librarians at your school or your colleagues at your job if you can sit in on some of their sessions informally.

Last but not least, practice, practice, practice. It sounds obvious, but it really makes a difference. I was so lucky that my supervisor at my Graduate Assistant job, Kate, was so willing for me to co-teach with her and also gave me opportunities to teach on my own. Getting that practice over and over while I was still a student went a long way to helping me feel more confident. I still feel the most nervous when I teach a session for the first time after a long break, but when this happens, I think back to the advice that Dr. Rawson gave our class – you can still be a great teacher even if you have a lot of nerves. I’ve also been glad to learn this year that once I’m back in the swing of teaching, I still have butterflies before an instructional, but my nerves aren’t nearly as bad. I’m trying to gear up now for what will probably be an instruction-heavy fall and will be interested to see how that impacts how I feel about teaching for the rest of the year.

So, what’s my teaching style? I’m still working on it. I love to include interactive components in my teaching whenever I can, but I feel that there’s still a place for sharing information with students in a more traditional format. I’m trying to figure out what icebreakers work well for graduate students and if I can ask them to do activities or not. And I’m working on building up the confidence to try new things in the classroom and to be okay if they don’t work out. I’m not sure if those things constitute a teaching style or not, but I hope they do – or that they will.

Conclusion

Together with all of our combined experiences, it is evident that there are so many different ways to approach teaching – and always new ways to learn and grow.

From the Reading Room to the Recording Room: What a Digital Project about Medieval Plainchant Taught Me About Collaboration

Editor’s note: We welcome a guest blog post from Michael C. Weisenburg, Director of the Irvin Department of Rare Books and Special Collections at the University of South Carolina Libraries.

The first time I hosted our early music class in special collections in the fall semester of 2015, I approached the session the way many of us do: with a carefully chosen set of materials, a plan for introducing students to the history and significance of medieval manuscripts, and a hope that the students would leave with a sense of what special collections can offer. In this case, the materials were medieval plainchant manuscripts from our holdings. Many of them were fragments, a few were large codices, and one had even been cut up and turned into a lampshade at some point in the early twentieth century. They are visually striking objects, of course, but they are also something more than that. They were made to be used. More specifically, they were made to be sung.

That basic fact sat at the center of the session, even if I did not yet fully know what to do with it.

Like many instruction sessions in special collections, the visit began as an opportunity for hands-on engagement with the past. We talked about the manuscripts as artifacts, their material histories, how they were made and used, and how they are now used as historic evidence. We talked about what students could learn from seeing these items in person rather than through a surrogate. We also talked about the music itself. How plainchant written on vellum carried forward a traditional performative repertoire across centuries in forms that still invite interpretation. Eventually, a question emerged that shifted the project from a one-off class visit into something much larger: if these manuscripts were made to be sung, why not have students sing from them?

Photo courtesy of Sarah Williams, University of South Carolina School of Music

It was a question that kept coming up with every class visit, and eventually that question became Singing the Archives, a digital exhibit hosted by the University of South Carolina Libraries and developed through a collaboration among Rare Books and Special Collections, Digital Collections, and the School of Music. What began as recurring instruction sessions grew into a project that asked students not just to view manuscripts, but to work with them through transcription, research, performance, recording, and digital interpretation. The resulting exhibit makes those manuscripts more accessible, but it also does something else that feels especially important: it makes them audible.

One reason this project matters beyond our local context is that it challenged a familiar tendency in academic libraries to keep special collections in a silo. Even when we are committed to teaching with rare materials, it is easy for that work to remain bound by the reading room. A class comes in, students have a memorable experience, the session ends, and sometimes a few of them will come back to the reading room on their own to work with rare materials as primary source examples for a final project. There is nothing wrong with that model; it’s the bread and butter of special collections instruction; it is valuable and sufficient. But this project suggested another possibility. What if special collections instruction is not only an encounter, but the beginning of a collaborative process? What if the session becomes a point of departure for student research, creative practice, digital scholarship, and public-facing work?

That was the real shift. The project moved beyond a one-time instructional session and became a shared enterprise across departments and academic units and has been sustained over time. Students engaged with the manuscripts in different ways depending on their roles and expertise. Some worked on transcription and the challenge of rendering medieval notation into forms that modern performers could use. Others contributed contextual research, editorial work, and performance-practice inquiry. Many of them blogged about their experiences and the challenges the project presented. Library colleagues in digital collections developed the infrastructure through which that work could become legible and accessible to a broader audience. Faculty in music brought disciplinary depth, pedagogical continuity, and the willingness to let students learn by doing. The exhibit became not just a final product, but an on-going record of shared labor.

One of the most exciting things about the project is that it reframed access. In libraries, we often talk about access in terms of discovery, digitization, and online availability. Those are crucial forms of access, and this project certainly benefited from them. But Singing the Archives reminded me that access can also be interpretive and sensory. A digitized manuscript image may allow a user to see a page, but a performance and recording can help users understand what that page was for. In that sense, the exhibit does more than reproduce objects online. It mediates between artifact and experience. It helps bridge the distance between modern audiences and historical materials by showing that these manuscripts are not static relics but living components of musical and devotional practice.

I also think the project offers a useful model for academic librarianship more broadly because it shows what can happen when rare books instruction sessions are treated as a springboard rather than an endpoint. Special collections are sometimes described as treasures, and while that language is understandable, it can also be limiting. Treasure implies rarity, value, and protection. It does not always imply use or engagement. What’s compelling in this collaboration was the way rare materials became a meeting point for teaching, research, technical expertise, and public engagement. The manuscripts became prompts for interdisciplinary learning and relationship-building across campus. Additionally, the manuscripts became even more fun. There was something exciting about hearing students sing from the manuscripts and sharing in their utter glee at being allowed to do so.

Photo courtesy of Kristine Hontz, University of South Carolina Libraries

That’s the larger lesson. Special collections can be one of the places where academic libraries demonstrate their fullest value not because we hold unique things, but because we can convene unique forms of collaboration around them. We can help translate specialized materials into formats and experiences that invite broader participation. And we can do all of that without flattening the complexity of the objects themselves. In fact, we can do so better by helping the objects to live again and fulfill their original purposes.

Of course, projects like this do not happen easily. They require time, trust, and a willingness to share ownership. They also require us to think differently about instruction. A successful class session is not always the end of the story. Sometimes it is the research and development stage for something larger. That “a-ha” moment of realizing that students should not only study the manuscripts but sing from them depended on recurring contact, on faculty partnership, and on being open to the idea that a special collections session might evolve into a collaborative project neither side fully anticipated at the start.

One takeaway I would offer other academic librarians is that when we teach with special collections, we should pay attention to what students and faculty want to do next. Their off-the-cuff questions and spontaneous ideas may point toward a deeper form of engagement than we originally planned. In our case, that next question led from the reading room to the recording room, and then into a digital exhibit that made the project public. That path will look different at other institutions, but the principle holds. Special collections do not have to function as niche destinations within the academic library. They can be active partners in teaching, discovery, and interdisciplinary collaboration. Sometimes that begins with a simple question in the classroom. And sometimes, if we are willing to follow it, that question can help us hear the collections differently.

All we’re doing is reading today.

Sometimes, the simplest instruction turns out to be the best.

A few weeks ago, I taught two classes that turned out so well that I’m still riding that wave as I write this now. The professor and I’s entire class plan was to bring down carts of books related to the class topic, have the students pick something they were interested in, and then read for about an hour. This was the first class after spring break, to ease them back into their studies.

I gave the barest minimum of library instruction at the beginning of class; I showed the students the library website, where I searched for books, and how to limit to the physical books we have in the library. I also took this opportunity to show them our new shelf map which attempts to simulate the serendipity of being up in the stacks. (Sidenote: our technology librarian, Chris, is a wizard for making tools like this.) Their professor then stepped in to explain what we were doing today, which was to find something that caught your eye and give it your (reading) attention for an hour. It was fine if they didn’t stick to the same book the entire time; they were encouraged to switch them out and read something else if they wanted to.

The professor and I also read for an hour with the students. We couldn’t very well ask them to do something and say it was important without modelling it, right? I had the book Algospeak by Adam Aleksic, but their professor pulled multiple books and switched them out throughout the class. I played lo-fi video game music in the background. And you know what? It worked so well.

None of the students in those two classes were on their phones or their laptops for a significant amount of time in that period. By the end of both classes, 7 students had voluntarily checked out 8 books. The one who checked out two had never checked out a book before in her college career. These were not necessarily related to class projects or papers, they just chose a book that captured their interest and read. We shared in groups and in a class setting.

When their professor asked how the experience felt, they had some amazing takeaways that we can sometimes only dream of actually teaching and passing on:

“Being friendly with yourself when reading dense things.”
- This student further talked about having to read passages multiple times (who hasn’t been there?) or looking up certain words they were unfamiliar with.
“Looking up stuff referenced in the book revitalized my want to keep reading.”
- This student had chosen a book from 2004. It referenced a country that would run out of water by 2015, and they were curious enough to go see what they’d done about the water crisis, since this country still exists.
  - They were doing lateral reading without knowing it!
- They also talked about using the index – which, to be clear, I did not talk about at all.

They also said that it was hard. Around the 15- or 20-minute mark, they said their attention started to waver, and I’ll be honest – mine does too. All of our attention spans have been decimated by the tiny computer in our pockets, and this deliberate class session to prioritize reading is trying to help remedy that.

The professor I did these sessions with happens to be the chair of their department, so after the fact, they emailed all the other faculty about how well it went. This led to another day of reading class, this time for a First Year Seminar. These students were definitely a little less focused than my 200- and 300-levels, but even so, some of them expressed how excited they were that class was going to be focused on reading. The professor and I did another debrief with students afterward, and at least two students from that class went on to check out the books they were reading.

A week or so after, the chair of the department caught me to chat in the library to let me know that one of those students in that First Year Seminar actually changed her major to Environmental Studies largely based on the book she got to check out in that class. That’s the kind of thing a librarian fantasizes about! Talk about getting books into their readers’ hands.

Clearly, it was worth it for us to take a step back and let curiosity guide some structured reading time. I know it’s hard to carve out time like that when everything feels like it needs to hurtle forward, especially with classes that have to cover so much content in a semester. It did take a lot of time on my part to both create the book lists for the classes and go up and pull them myself, though if I were really strapped for time, I could have passed that off to a student worker. (I just like getting my hands on real books whenever I get the chance.)

If it’s at all possible, though, I think the benefits speak for themselves. Books were checked out, students were reading, and it led to more library sessions and other initiatives. For instance, for finals season, we are hosting a “silent reading club” every Wednesday from 2-4pm until the semester ends in mid-May. I am excited to see this continue into other disciplines next fall semester, since all the other liaison librarians were just as jazzed as I was about the success of these sessions.

Let me know if you try it and how it works for you!

Refusing (to let go of) AI: An Ignatian Pedagogy for a Real AI Literacy

Editor’s note: We welcome a guest blog post from Maxwell Gray, Digital Scholarship Librarian at Marquette University.

My personal, professional relationship with generative AI (genAI) is complicated.

Like many academic librarians, I identify as a deeply anti-AI librarian, who believes AI, especially genAI, designed and built by technocratic oligarchs outside any democratic process represents a real crisis for workers, the environment and human cognition.

But I don’t believe AI refusal represents a productive alternative to the uncritical adoption of AI in higher education. Rhetorically, I don’t think AI refusal will persuade many audiences in academic libraries and higher education to approach AI critically or ethically. I actually worry AI refusal may accidentally cause some audiences to misunderstand the choice as being literally between either simplistic refusal or uncritical adoption.

As a digital scholarship librarian in Jesuit higher education, my response to genAI has been a pedagogy of engagement with the real, lived experiences of students, faculty and staff vis-à-vis genAI. I take this language of engagement and real, lived experiences from the tradition of Ignatian pedagogy where this language represents a “serious, down-to-earth engagement with the real” in the form of the “concrete, lived experience in all its diversity and particularity.”

This kind of pedagogy may take the form of direct experience and contact with the world through the senses and emotions. How do different genAI tools respond to the same prompts? How does the same genAI tool respond to the same prompts for different users? How do the different “styles” or “voices” of different genAI tools, or of the same genAI tool in response to different prompts, make us feel in our bodies, hearts and minds?

Or this kind of pedagogy may take the form of making connections between different varieties of knowledge, or between knowledge and action. How do different genAI use policies in different workplaces reflect different data privacy frameworks in different social contexts? How do problems of informants, confidentiality and reciprocity in anthropology resonate with problems of authorship, data privacy and intellectual property in relation to genAI? (These are real examples from my experience teaching professional graduate students and anthropology major capstone students this semester.)

Ultimately, this kind of pedagogy should take the form of reflecting on experience and knowledge to decide upon the best, most meaningful course of action in the world. This kind of reflection, often called discernment in the tradition of Ignatius and the Society of Jesus, produces a kind of interiority oriented toward personal transformation and social justice. Why do I choose to use genAI tools in the ways I do? How may I use, or not use, genAI tools differently in response to other desires and callings? (These are abstract examples from my experience leading professional development sessions for faculty and staff over the past two years in collaboration with colleagues at Marquette’s Center for Teaching and Learning.)

To be clear, I’m not saying anti-AI librarians who believe in AI refusal don’t often already practice similar pedagogies of engagement with the real world. I’m not saying genAI is inevitable or there is no alternative. Instead, I’m trying to share language and perspective I think are more productive for stopping the uncritical adoption of AI in academic libraries and higher education.

What may it mean to be anti-AI librarians who don’t believe in AI refusal? What may it mean to be anti-AI librarians who believe in serious engagement, with the realities of AI and the realities of our colleagues and patrons? Jerome Nadal, one of Ignatius’s early companions, observed about the Jesuits (as opposed to monastic orders like the Benedictines) that “the whole world is our home.” What may it mean to be anti-AI librarians for whom the whole world, including AI, is our home in this moment when AI, especially genAI, often represents real injustices and indignities?

In a key text for Jesuit higher education, Dean Brackley, S.J, envisions Jesuit colleges and universities as being called to a mission of proyección social. Brackley writes, “Social projection includes all those means by which the university communicates, or projects, knowledge beyond the campus to help shape the consciousness of the wider society.” When I reread Brackley in this moment, I hear him saying that being at home in the world must not mean becoming comfortable with the realities of injustice, but instead must mean promoting justice in the world.

In my pedagogy in and around the library, I have tried to share knowledge I have learned from information studies, media studies and digital humanities with colleagues and patrons from across the university to help shape and raise consciousness on campus of genAI and its injustices and indignities. Over time I have learned doing this work requires seriously engaging with the real interests of students, faculty and staff, and the most effective ways of connecting with them that address their real fears, attachments and desires around genAI.

To other anti-AI librarians in academic libraries, I propose, “let us say yes to who or what turns up” in our classrooms or workshops and for our students and colleagues, wherever they are on their personal AI literacy journeys. In this way, we may open educational contexts where real engagement and discernment can take place, whether in a one-shot for students or over a series of professional development sessions for faculty and staff.

The former Superior General of the Society of Jesus Adolfo Nicolás writes, “Depth of thought and imagination in the Ignatian tradition involves a profound engagement with the real, a refusal to let go until one goes beneath the surface.” What may it mean to be anti-AI librarians who “refuse to let go” of AI until we go beneath the surface of reality toward more critical futures of AI in academic libraries and higher education? What companions may we find to join us in this work? What converts may we inspire?