Daily News Item 2026-06-15 11:41

Libraries, which could always benefit from funding for digitization efforts, are being approached by AI companies offering to pay for materials to be digitized in order for that data to be used to train models, Library Journal reports. While these arrangements can benefit libraries, there’s reason to be cautious. To ensure that proper care is taken when partnering with AI companies, the University of Virginia recently published a statement enumerating shared practices for AI training requests, which sixteen other universities have cosigned. These institutions have jointly agreed to separate digitization from AI use, apply scrutiny to broad training requests, and preserve the ability to share information, among other things. “We have responsibilities to the people who donated these materials to us,” UVA dean of libraries and university librarian Leo S. Lo said. “We want to make sure that we can fulfill our stewardship [duties] and have accountability.”