Lorcan Dempsey on social, cultural and technological contexts of libraries, services and networks
This is a further excerpt from my response to the LIS Forward paper. It considers some of the history and contours of the informational disciplines - information science, LIS, library studies. It notes the ongoing blurriness of identity, nomenclature and boundaries.
A discussion of libraries and library studies in the context of library education. It is the introduction to, and summary of, my response to the LIS Forward position paper.
A short discussion of sources of ideas in the library community, with special reference to the general framework laid out by Daniel Drezner.
I wrote this piece on libraries and possible educational responses as part of a longer contribution on the informational disciplines and the iSchool. A principal goal was to suggest that libraries present interesting and challenging research and educational questions, which cross disciplines.
Cliff Lynch sadly died on 10th April 2025. Responses show how much Cliff meant to so many, and to the library and related communities. Here are some personal reminiscences and an appreciation of his achievement and the loss.
In a piece on the informational disciplines and the iSchool, I sketched this very schematic and informal overview of information, broadly construed. My focus is pragmatic, related to library interests. I consider several current issues, including the 'apotheosis of the document' in an AI context.
AI-assisted document query and summarization services are becoming more common. This post compares the 'ask a PDF' outputs of several services. Overall responses were good, with reasonable variation, and no significant hallucinations. It also touches on some characteristics of AI-based services.
I reflect on my first year of teaching at the iSchool in the University of Washington. A little about teaching. A little about Canvas, the library, and some software tools. A little about me and my learnings.
Introduces an annotated presentation about AI, libraries and a range of related issues. It is influenced by the consequences of considering AI as a new 'cultural technology.'
I was excited to discover the graphic novel Smile by Raina Telgemeier. The subject matter has strong personal resonances for me.
So-called soft skills are important across a range of library activities. Existing trends will further amplify this importance. Describing these skills as soft may be misleading, or even damaging. They should be recognized as learnable and teachable, and should be explicitly supported and rewarded.
For a few days recently, the news was dominated by reports of organizational upheaval at OpenAI. Here are some reflections on what happened, with some connections to library topics.
OpenAI now allows you to develop custom chatbots which use the power of GPT4 but can be tailored to work with your data and carry out particular actions. I discuss them in general and introduce an example built on some of my own publications.
Understanding the discussion about AI benefits from hands-on experience of tools and services.
Libraries are engaging with AI in their educational, service and policy work. This post discusses seven contexts in which that work is taking place.