The 1957 film Desk Set at first seems poised to play out a classic “man versus machine” plot: A whip-smart research librarian played by Katharine Hepburn is suspicious when an efficiency expert and inventor of the EMERAC (“Electromagnetic MEmory and Research Arithmetical Calculator”) played by Spencer Tracy introduces a large machine into the middle of her workplace. Hepburn’s librarian and her associates believe that they’re all about to lose their jobs—but it turns out that Tracy has brought in the “electronic brain” not to replace the librarians but to help them perform their tasks more efficiently. And when the machine inevitably malfunctions, humans repair the damage and save the day.
A reading room in the Hoboken Public Library in New Jersey. (Credit: Courtesy of the Hoboken Public Library)
As libraries face today’s “electronic brain”—that is, AI—they find themselves in a similar position of reckoning to that of Hepburn’s librarian. In December the Public Library Association (PLA) announced the launch of a Transformative Technology Task Force, designed, according to an announcement from the PLA, to “advise the association on the evolving role and impacts of transformative technology on library work and to identify and recommend priority training topics relevant to public library staff and users.” The nine PLA members on the task force hail from across the United States and include library directors and librarians who specialize in technology as well as project managers who work with large-scale community institutions.
AI looms as a nebulous and often ill-understood threat over many cultural institutions, particularly ones invested in creative output and information management. When it filters into libraries and book publishing, the false content and “slop” that AI frequently generates can create problems of trust and accountability, as the public relies on these institutions for verified information. With its tentacles already reaching into everyday life, AI might seem to pose an existential threat to libraries. But AI may well prove not to be a threat to overtake public libraries but simply become a part of their ecosystem.
Public libraries, which take on myriad roles—curator and archivist but also educator and service provider—teach patrons how to seek and organize information, and now they’re doing it with AI. At libraries across the country, a growing number of librarians are embracing the emergent technology.
For Jennie Pu, director of the Hoboken Public Library in New Jersey, the presence of AI isn’t a menace so much as an opportunity to do what libraries do best: help patrons manage information. “It’s kind of scary for a lot of people,” says Pu, and the role of the public library is “to reduce the fear and figure it out together.”
In fact it should perhaps come as no surprise that libraries and librarians have been on the front lines of AI literacy, both learning how to use AI themselves and training staff and patrons in best practices. As Pu points out, librarians were early adopters of Twitter, and they quickly adapted to Google. Search engines didn’t supplant the role of the library; rather, librarians adapted to this resource. Indeed, Pu explains that she and her staff have a duty to understand the technology firsthand so that they can help patrons. Pu finds AI extremely useful for organizing and scheduling; libraries have so much data to manage that large language models (LLMs) can turn previously cumbersome tasks into highly manageable goals. “Access to information is essential and at the core of our mission,” says Pu.
Public libraries both anticipate and respond to the needs and desires of the communities they serve. “What we’ve seen is actually a lot of demand for AI literacy,” says Pu. In response, the Hoboken Public Library has offered services such as a recent workshop series about LLMs that filled to capacity immediately.
This pattern of libraries as spaces where patrons learn how to detect disinformation and develop AI literacy is observable around the country. For Mary Ellen Icaza, CEO and executive director of the Stark Library in Canton, Ohio, the role of libraries hasn’t changed in the age of AI. “We are information specialists,” says Icaza. The ability to discern information has never been more high-stakes.
“Years ago, when the internet first was invented…people would say, ‘Oh, we’re not going to need libraries anymore; we’re not going to need librarians—everything is on the internet,’” says Icaza. “Well, that hasn’t happened. We still need libraries.”
While librarians have been the ones welcoming new technology in some communities, in others the patrons are leading the charge for information and education related to AI. Craig Scott, director of the Gadsden Public Library in Alabama, was thrilled when a new member, Brandie West, approached him to start a workshop on AI literacy. Scott, former president of the Alabama Library Association, notes that libraries in the region have yet to acknowledge the presence of AI on an institutional level, let alone offer resources to patrons; at a recent statewide convention of librarians in Alabama, no one even mentioned AI.
West’s AI course has incited some fury on the Gadsden Public Library’s social media. Though the library serves a predominantly conservative but politically mixed community, one thing that people on all sides of the political spectrum agreed on seemed to be their antipathy toward AI. This distrust ranged from fear of the technology’s intelligence to its environmental impact.
Ironically, Scott says, though the community might fear AI controlling knowledge and overtaking creativity, the biggest threat to his library’s diversity and resource management isn’t coming through technology: It’s coming through human legislation. New policy from the Alabama Public Library Service Board compelled Scott to remove all materials addressing trans people from the children’s and teen sections. So Scott had to get creative, revamping the shelving in the library to get these books in front of their audiences.
Even though the state is trying to dictate the agenda, Scott is doing what public libraries were built to do: respond to the people in the community as people. Pu echoes this sentiment. “What libraries offer are people—and people we trust,” she says. “This is the role we’ve always served.”
Adrienne Raphel is the author of Our Dark Academia (Rescue Press, 2022), Thinking Inside the Box: Adventures With Crosswords and the Puzzling People Who Can’t Live Without Them (Penguin Press, 2020), and What Was It For (Rescue Press, 2017). She teaches at Baruch College and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
