AI + Libraries Call for Proposals

Your Name and Title:

Sharon Clapp, Associate Librarian, Digital Resources

Library, School, or Organization Name:

Elihu Burritt Library, Central Connecticut State University

Co-Presenter Name(s): N/A

Area of the World from Which You Will Present:

East Coast, North America (NY Time Zone)

Language in Which You Will Present:

English

Target Audience(s):

Academic librarians, public librarians, school librarians - any librarian with website usability / libguides creation responsibility

Short Session Description (one line):

Improving Library Website Usability with AI

Full Session Description (as long as you would like):

How can we improve our digital branches (library websites / LibGuides, etc.) using AI? Going beyond the addition of chatbots to our websites, this presentation will showcase a small set of experiments in the usage of AI tools for website usability assessment and improvements. 

Librarians have limited budgets and resources for website usability testing and remediation. At the same time, much of what we produce to support and engage with students takes place online, so the usability of our “digital branch” is key. Content is hard to produce and optimize, navigation and labelling are a challenge, but that’s not all. Can we leverage AI to improve our library websites’ usability? I will share experiences with creation of a custom GPT, prompts for LLMs to suggest less library-specific, more user-friendly terminology for navigation links, and the use of AI to analyze qualitative research (e.g., from user feedback). I’ll show you these experiments & their results, wherever possible, I will ground-truth the LLM-generated results using the work of previous human-based usability testing. 

Finally, let’s discuss - Have you used AI to improve you library’ website - if so, how? How successful were these experiments from your perspective? What ideas can you share for leveraging AI to improve the online presence of all of our libraries? Be prepared to add in your own thoughts, questions, and feedback. It’s moving too fast for claims of canonical expertise in this realm. Instead, I am happy to share my own experiences and look forward to discussing what may be a brave new world using AI to improve online library experiences.

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Sharon Clapp is the Digital Resources Librarian at Central Connecticut State University’s Elihu Burritt Library. She has her Master’s degree in Library/Information Science and has worked with library systems, virtual reference, user experience design, and website development since 1998. Since receiving tenure and promotion in 2019, she became a fellow for the IDEA Institute on Artificial Intelligence in Libraries, Archives, and Museums in 2022 and is serving on her university’s Presidential Task Force on AI. Along with the Library Director and instructional colleagues, she coordinated the creation of an AI literacy course that will be taught faculty librarians as part of CCSU’s new AI minor beginning in Fall 2024.