New Voices RGU Student Series 2025 – Nicky Stewart
Category: Blog, RGU Student Series 2025
In the 2025 New Voices Student Series, the CILIPS Students & New Professionals Community will be sharing the views of Robert Gordon University students from the MSc in Information and Library Studies.
With special thanks to Dr Konstantina Martzoukou, Teaching Excellence Fellow and Associate Professor, for organising these thought-provoking contributions.
Today’s blog contributor is Nicky Stewart. Nicky is a Systems Librarian at Glasgow Caledonian University with 14 years of experience, specialising in enhancing technological infrastructure and optimising library management systems. Currently pursuing a Masters in Library and Information Science, Nicky is passionate about leveraging technology to improve digital resource access, streamline library operations, and enhance overall library experience through innovative solutions.
Stewarding the future: How information professionals can help students safely unlock the potential of GenAI
Adapted from images generated by Copilot (Copilot 2024).
Imagine a future where students confidently and securely use GenAI as part of their studies, exploiting the full capabilities of AI tools, all the while keenly aware of their limitations and the boundaries of safe use within their coursework. Information professionals – with their in-depth knowledge of using strategies to find quality academic information, experience with areas of complex ethical and legal requirements such as copyright and plagiarism, and their understanding of information security – are uniquely positioned to help make this future a reality.
About GenAI
GenAI offers users the ability to find information or generate content based on natural language inputs called ‘prompts’. Through its use, students can:
- Improve their understanding
- Enrich their work
- Reduce their workload
However, GenAI also presents challenges. It allows students to easily generate content that can be passed off as their own work; it can provide inaccurate or completely invented (commonly known as ‘hallucinated’) information; and presents information security risks if users enter personal or sensitive information (Alasadi and Baiz, 2023).
Impact of GenAI on Information Professionals
For information professionals, GenAI represents a radical shift in the information and knowledge domain (Bahroun et al., 2023). Like many industries and professions, the power of AI threatens to diminish the need for information workers and their roles. Nevertheless, information professionals’ skills and knowledge in this domain provide them with an opportunity to adapt and become leading proponents of GenAI.
Literature Searching and GenAI: Transferrable Skills
Support for and teaching of literature searching is a task commonly undertaken by information professionals such as librarians in academic institutions. Literature searching is the execution of an organised approach to identifying key literature on a given topic (University of Leeds, 2024). In literature searching, students must use their critical faculties to:
- Define the terms of their search
- Assess the most appropriate sources to search
- Develop a search strategy
- Adjust and refine their strategy to further improve their results
Successful search strategies often require students to employ a range of techniques such as keyword searching, truncation and wildcards, and use of Boolean logic commands. In universities, academic librarians are on hand to help users understand how to use these techniques appropriately and how to develop and iterate upon their searching to uncover the most appropriate material.
Like literature searching, GenAI requires users to employ sophisticated strategies and a range of techniques to produce successful results. Students should employ good prompt writing practice when using AI tools (Amatriain 2023) such as:
- Awareness of the key components of prompts, for example Instructions, Questions, Input Data and Examples
- Use of specific syntax to control the quality of outputs
- Techniques such as chain-of-thought prompting
An Opportunity to Lead
Given the apparent similarities, it is possible to see how the skills and knowledge that information professionals already possess can be transferred to this new sphere. Additionally, by becoming a key point of reference and support for GenAI, information professionals will have the opportunity to engage students on topics of ethical use, as well as how to keep safe while using GenAI by not revealing personal or sensitive information.
Becoming Leaders
For information professionals to meet this need, it will require them to:
- Involve themselves in wider conversations about AI policy within their organisations, promoting themselves as key stakeholders
- Keep up to date on current debates on AI
- Become adept users of GenAI tools
From this position, information professionals will be well placed to help deliver a brighter, safer, and more ethical future for GenAI.
References
Alasadi, E.A. and Baiz, C.R. (2023) ‘Generative AI in Education and Research: Opportunities, Concerns, and Solutions’, Journal of Chemical Education, 100(8), pp. 2965–2971. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.3c00323
Amatriain, X. (2023) Prompt Engineering: How to Talk to the AIs. Date uploaded: 17 Apr 2023. Available from: https://www.linkedin.com/learning/prompt-engineering-how-to-talk-to-the-ais/talking-to-the-ais [Accessed 9 Oct 2024].
Bahroun, Z. et al. (2023) ‘Transforming Education: A Comprehensive Review of Generative Artificial Intelligence in Educational Settings through Bibliometric and Content Analysis’, Sustainability, 15(17), Available at: https://doi.org/10.3390/su151712983
Chan, C. and Hu, W.J. (2023) ‘Students’ voices on generative AI: perceptions, benefits, and challenges in higher education’, International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 20(1), pp. 43–18. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-023-00411-8
University of Leeds (2024) Literature searching explained. Available from: https://library.leeds.ac.uk/info/1404/literature-searching/14/literature-searching-explained [Accessed: 9 Oct 2024].
Zhou, T. and Li, S. (2024) ‘Understanding user switch of information seeking: From search engines to generative AI’, Journal of Librarianship and Information Science (in press). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/09610006241244800