Charlow, Aurora wrote:
>1. It takes an afternoon (maybe two, if you don't know anything about databases) to learn SQL querying. I have done this. It is one of the simplest coding languages there is.
That's wonderful you've had that experience. I have personally
watched Cobol programmers and BI report developers struggle to switch
to using SQL at our District when we changed information systems.
Many of them were let go. Not everyone can make transitions like that
successfully. These were experienced IT professionals and it was
heartbreaking to watch them leave. (No AI involved in this situation.
Just a transition to different software.)
>Anyone who watches the economics of these things should know by now that they are functioning at current scale on borrowed time, and when they retreat to their little corner of the tech industry (where they belong) they'll be taking our retirement accounts with them. When that happens, libraries who continue to pay for this technology will be forced to cut access to knowledge, or more realistically, lay off employees to compensate. Claude can't adequately replace your catalogers.
There are Open Source LLM models and Open Source AI technology. Why
are libraries paying for these technologies when they're freely
accessible and more secure if used offline? AIs can increase job
efficiency in certain cases, but if an organization cares about
accuracy, the jobs an AI does need to be supervised by a human at this
point in time. I think one issue is that many organizations don't
understand how to effectively use the technology and are using it as
an excuse to lay off workers or not do proper QA of work being done.
Eric Lease Morgan wrote:
>What I would really like to see is the creation of one or more LLM built by the library profession. This way we would know whence the model came, how it was implemented, and remove the blackness. Such an effort would be akin to collaboration we have seen in the past when it comes to collection building or metadata sharing. Yes, it would be very expensive, but if we were to pool our resources, then I think it could be done.
There are some Open Source models being worked up by educational
groups such as this one by the Open EdTech group. I think they'd be
interested in collaboration if anyone wanted to get involved in the
project.
https://github.com/openedtech/edubot
https://openedtech.global/
If you look for FOSS volunteers to donate their time for these types
of projects, the expense might be more time related rather than
monetary.
RAGs and similar techniques could also be useful. Some AI systems are
designed to answer questions only from the documents they're given to
lower the risk of fabricating results. Many popular chatbots do
fabricate results, I've had them give references to books and web
sites that don't exist very often.
I'm not going to say that LLMs are good or bad. Like any technology,
they can be both. Some people will find benefits using these tools.
Some people will find it hinders work or can have serious negative
results if not used with extreme care under certain circumstances. I
personally like the idea of people being able to make the decision to
use or not use them for themselves, to be able to decide when it could
be a benefit or a liability and to have the ability to change their
minds at any point in the future.
Received on Fri Jul 10 2026 - 10:14:11 EDT