RCL Blog

Google's AI Overviews as a Teaching Tool

A new feature of Google search presents opportunities for information literacy instructors.

Google's recent decision to begin including AI Overviews at the top of their search results presents library instructors with a strong metaliteracy teaching tool. These overviews pull information from a variety of sources and present the user with an artificial intelligence powered overview of the topic or query. As of 5/30/24, this appears above all other search results. Librarians will be relieved to know that the cited information is linked under the overview - and the user has the ability to "check the source" if they are so inclined. Google's Search executive Liz Reid recently said this is all about letting "Google ... do the Googling for you."

I am certainly not the first to wonder if that might significantly reduce traffic - add revenue - for websites and content creators whose work is populating the overviews, and there have been numerous embarrassing examples of these AI Overviews simply getting it wrong. I encourage you to search for "Google AI Overview Fails" on your social media platform of choice for some funny - and some disturbing - examples. Leaving these questions aside for a moment, Google's AI Overview also presents those teaching information literacy with a powerful teaching tool:

• These overviews open conversations about the overlap between information literacy and emerging AI technologies and platforms.
• Because these overviews draw on such a variety of sources, they are inroads to talking about intellectual property and the ethical use of other's work.
• They give librarians a concrete way to discuss AI - something that many academic libraries are stepping up and tasking themselves with. 
• They give us ways to help library users better understand how and why they are seeing what they see online.
• Those interested in critical librarianship can discuss the issues related to add-revenue loss for content creators, the ethics of encouraging users to trust a model that hallucinates, or even the environmental impact that this will have.
• These overviews can also be seen as powerful research tools - and something worth discussing with increasingly busy students who can should be empowered to use them ethically and efficiently.

I hope that it is obvious that there are many ways that these AI overviews can be incorporated into a lesson about how information lives, and how it is created online. I can see this connecting to the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy and seems to overlap easily with several of the threshold concepts academic librarians are encouraged to address in our work with students. I will elaborate on this in future posts, but for now I want to highlight a specific activity you can use to start asking students these questions.

Assumed Intent and Google Search: Beyond Confirmation Bias

Present students with the following images, or generate ones more appropriate to the course content.

Ask students to briefly jot down, 'What do you notice about the two images below?'

What we are seeing here is the assumed intent of the Google search algorithm. The keywords we use actually do matter(!) and will change the results that we are presented with. Google is designed to present users with results that answer our question - not provide the most accurate or most authoritative information. Google assumes to know what we want based on how we ask. This is not necessarily a good or bad thing, and in fact is a great opportunity to teach students how to be better internet users and better researchers.  The AI Overview could be used to highlight all of these ideas to students - and I imagine students working in groups to find similar examples that could be shared out with the whole group. Hopefully in the end, students can better understand how using a more neutral vocabulary will yield better results. This also parallels the importance of using a controlled vocabulary when searching disciplinary databases, so I can easily see this activity leading into a disciplinary research workshop. 

These AI overviews are useful to students - and if we are encouraging them to be metaliterate learners and creators, I think it is incumbent on us to empower them to use these tools effectively and ethically. There is also room for us to encourage students to be critical of these tools - as more and more will certainly proliferate. Metaliterate learners need to must learn to evaluate not just the information that they are encountering but the platforms they are using to find that information. Encouraging students to explore Google's AI Overviews can be a very tangible, accessible, and practical way to get students doing just that.

As far as the difficult questions all of this raises, I think that is also up to the next generation to begin answering. After all, it will be their media, their work, their faces, and their sweet sweet content that has fed and will continue to feed these large language models.

On the 3rd and 4th of May, the instruction intern team at Rebecca Crown Library attended the LOEX (Library Orientation Exchange) conference in Naperville, Illinois. The 2024 theme was Branching Out: Growing and Adapting your Information Literacy Practice. This conference focuses on instruction librarianship within academic institutions. 

The morning of Friday, May 3rd, began with the preliminary speaker, Maura Seale, who discussed critical literacy pedagogy, labor issues in libraries, and the influence of AI. Her discussion of one-shot classes, a continued topic throughout the conference, is relevant to our internship at RCL, where we have all taught one-time-only library sessions to students. Seale advised that these work well when it is the beginning of an ongoing partnership, whether through follow-up classroom visits, research consultations, or project collaborations. This provides librarians the time and connections to impart critical information literacy skills. She discussed the importance of human conversation in learning and the value of this labor, which can be undermined by unrealistic demands on librarians' work capacities and by using AI in substitution for research consultations. 

Seale quoted Brian Merchant's blog post from the Substack Blood in the Machine: "There’s a tight labor market, high employment, and companies are very eager to embrace technological tools to either replace human workers or wield as leverage against them.” She mentioned the trend hype cycles of technology in academia, recalling the use of tools such as SecondLife, that were quickly discarded when the trend faded. She referred to slow librarianship as an alternative to fast-paced, trend-chasing, competitive approaches that can lead to burnout and decreased human connections. 

After this session, the interns (Mary Laffey, Keeley Flanigan, and I) attended four sessions throughout the day, starting with: 

Assessing College Students' Everyday Information Seeking: Implications for IL Instruction, facilitated by Stephanie Ward and Rachel Dinnen, who are Teaching and Learning Librarians from the University of Northern Colorado.

This session focused on a study performed by Ward and Dinnen, who asked students who "previously had IL instruction to describe their thinking as they completed information-seeking tasks and selected information sources" (LOEX). They learned that students mainly performed basic verb searches and judged the results by the indicators of the website's appearance and domain name. The librarians noticed a lack of investigation into the author of sources and connected this to a theme of “saying one thing and doing another,” meaning that the students know that sources should be interrogated for authority, but in practice, this is overlooked. To help students improve their overall information seeking, librarians can demonstrate keyword revision in instruction, build on tendencies to examine objectivity and bias, and practice lateral reading.

Our next session was The Incarcerated One-Shot: Applying Critical Pedagogy to Support Information Literacy Skill Development in Higher Education Prison Programs by Rebecca Blunk, a Reference & Instruction Librarian at the College of Southern Nevada. 

This was an enriching talk on a topic outside of any of our day-to-day work experiences. Blunk first introduced us to the prisons she works within and the demographics within, noting the disproportionately large population of people of color, specifically Black individuals, in prisons, contrasted with the overrepresentation of White individuals in academia. Amongst college-seeking incarcerated people, the White population remains overrepresented. She connected this to the school-to-prison pipeline. She then gave a timeline of college education within prisons in America. 

Blunk explained the volunteer training visiting librarians undergo in Nevada, including an acknowledgment that they will not bring any technology into the institution. She discussed the critical pedagogy that informs her work, referencing Pablo Friere, Michel Foucault, and Henry Giroux. She quoted Giroux, who stated that Friere believed education should be a "political and moral practice that provides the knowledge, skills, and social relations that enable students to explore the possibilities of what it means to be critical citizens while expanding and deepening their participation in the promise of a substantive democracy" (Giroux). Blunk stated the difficulty/impossibility of truly implementing this belief when the students are actively kept from participating in many aspects of society. 

Blunk explained the challenges of her role as a visiting academic librarian in prisons, focusing on the "old school" teaching she must use due to the lack of technology. She prints screenshots of search results, online resources, and presentation slides. She discusses imparting information literacy tips by asking the students to share something they are an expert in, how they came to know the topic, stereotypes about it, the most important parts of it, and keywords one could use to research it. 

After this session, we stopped by a poster session featuring Rebecca Crown Library’s Megan Hoppe, who demonstrated the social media overhaul they facilitated in the past year. This was an exciting look at the progress in RCL's outreach efforts and the collaborative effort that our librarians, archivist, and student workers undertake to communicate with library patrons. 

The next session I attended was Growing Critical Information Literacy in our General Education Program by Grounding Ourselves in an Ethic of Care by Perri Moreno, Student Success Librarian, and Catherine Baird, Online and Outreach Services Librarian, both from Montclair State University. 

This session stressed the importance of caring for the genuine well-being of ourselves as library workers and for the student body. They stated, "Working conditions are learning conditions," emphasizing that by caring for our library staff and faculty, student learning will benefit in the long run. They recommended the books Transforming Hispanic-Serving Institutions for Equity and Justice by Gina Ann Garcia and Feminists Among Us: Resistance and Advocacy in Library Leadership edited by Shirley Lew and Baharak Yousefi. Moreno and Baird have switched to taking a proactive approach to teaching sessions rather than reactive. They have decreased their time spent teaching writing courses, which was a strain on the library staff and inhibited their ability to help other disciplines as thoroughly. They learned this partially by tracking their work activities, which showed how packed their schedules were. They maintained a good relationship with the English department while creating more space to enact an ethic of care for themselves. 

Similar to the first speaker, they mentioned embracing slow librarianship and doing "less with less." They also discussed the integration of critical information literacy, explaining how librarians face institutional challenges when working to impart critical thinking skills that challenge and critique hegemonic structures. They mentioned sneaking these teachings into their lessons without naming them directly, which was a strategy mentioned by other speakers in an era of DEI pushback. 

The last session I attended on Friday was Fertilizing the Social and Emotional Roots: Assessing Belonging, Confidence, and Connectedness in Academic Library Programming by Kate Langan, an Engagement Librarian from Western Michigan University. 

This session discussed flourishing, which Langan quoted Deigh in defining as "the ability to develop personal standards and practices to navigate not only for the good of the self but for the collective good of society" (Deigh, 2010). She referred to a LibGuide she created on the topic, which includes her references and slides from the LOEX presentation. She stated that flourishing with information for early adults in college looks like an "increased sense of belonging and legitimacy, improved confidence in academic abilities, and having stronger connections to the university community." Langan was able to help students flourish at Western Michigan University through a library "Amazing Race," which acquainted them with the physical space and varied resources through a collaborative game. This presentation stressed the importance of community for college students, many of whom feel isolated in their experiences. The library has valuable potential to gather students and provide a safe space for exploration and engagement. 

This blog post will continue soon with learnings gathered from day 2, but until then, the intern team is grateful for the opportunity to have heard from professionals in the field! It is exciting to see the kind, thoughtful, and intelligent work librarians are sharing with universities across the country. It was interesting to see the repeated themes of concerns and developments within varied types of academic libraries. 

The beginning of May signals the end of the spring semester and the beginning of Mental Health Awareness Month. This month is dedicated to encouraging self care, remembering those who have been lost to mental illness, and raising awareness about mental health to create lasting change.

Mental illness has long been mistreated by medical professionals, misrepresented in literature and media, and misunderstood by most of society. People who suffer from mental illness are often perceived as “crazy” or “insane” because there is seemingly no physical evidence of their pain. Many characters in literature and media with mental illness have been portrayed as subhuman or violent such as Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre, the “true story” Sybil, Norman Bates in Psycho, or Michael Meyers in Halloween. Historical attempts to cure mental illness have resulted in inhumane treatments and the creation of asylums to isolate “the insane” from the rest of the population, when in reality, more human interaction is needed. As a result of these influences, society has developed a warped understanding of mentally ill individuals, falsely believing them to be excessively violent and dangerous.

In truth, 1 in every 5 U.S. adults experience mental illness each year, meaning that most Americans struggle with mental health issues on a day to day basis (NAMI). Mental wellness is just as important as physical wellness, so raising awareness is imperative to erasing the stigma around mental health. Below are some of the library’s positive research and learning materials on mental health awareness, including a LibGuide, films, personal narratives, books, and more…

• https://research.dom.edu/mha 

• https://www.dom.edu/campus-life/wellness-center/counseling-services 

LGBTQ Mental Health : International Perspectives and Experiences by Nakamura, N. & Logie, Carmen H. editors (2020) -- LGBTQ Mental Health: International Perspectives and Experiences expands our understanding of mental health by considering the unique challenges faced by LGBTQ communities in the Majority World. Increased globalization and migration have highlighted the need for mental health clinicians to better understand these communities' experiences and needs. Contributors summarize existing research on mental health outcomes for LGBTQ individuals in these countries or regions; offer key insights that challenge culturally specific conceptions of normative, LGBTQ mental health and behavior; and offer recommendations for further research and mental health practice with these populations.

Peace is Every Step by Thích Nhất Hạnh -- In the rush of modern life we tend to lose touch with the peace that is available in each moment. World-renowned Zen master, spiritual leader, and author Thich Nhat Hanh shows us how to make positive use of the situations that usually pressure and antagonize us. A ringing telephone can be a signal to call us back to our true selves. Dirty dishes, red lights, and traffic jams are spiritual friends on the path to "mindfulness," the process of keeping our consciousness alive to our present experience and reality. The most profound satisfactions, the deepest feelings of joy and completeness lie as close at hand as our next aware breath and the smile we can form right now.

I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jeannette McCurdy -- A memoir by Jennette McCurdy about her childhood as a child star, her problematic relationship with her mother, and her struggles with eating disorders, addiction, body image, and mental health. The book is divided into two sections, "Before" and "After", which describe the events of her life before and after her mother's death from cancer in 2013, as well as her journey toward self-acceptance and reconciling her past and current relationship with her abusive mother.

Awakenings -- Dr. Malcolm Sayer (Robin Williams) is a shy research physician who uses an experimental drug to "awaken" the catatonic victims of a rare disease. The awakening of the first patient proves a rebirth for the doctor, too, as the patient reveals life's simple but sweet pleasures to the introverted doctor. Encouraged by Leonard's stunning recovery, Sayer administers the drug to other patients, finding new meaning in life and providing more patients with a renewed passion for life.

 .

Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky -- This is the story of what it's like to grow up in high school. More intimate than a diary, Charlie's letters are singular and unique, hilarious and devastating. We may not know where he lives. We may not know to whom he is writing. All we know is the world he shares. Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it puts him on a strange course through uncharted territory. The world of first dates and mixed tapes, family dramas, and new friends. The world of sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, when all one requires is that the perfect song on that perfect drive to feel infinite.

A Beautiful Mind -- From the heights of notoriety to the depths of depravity, John Forbes Nash, Jr. experienced it all. A mathematical genius, he made an astonishing discovery early in his career and stood on the brink of international acclaim. But the handsome and arrogant Nash soon found himself on a painful and harrowing journey of self-discovery. After many years of struggle, he eventually triumphed over his tragedy, and finally - late in life - received the Nobel Prize.

Insane : America's Criminal Treatment of Mental Illness by Alisa Roth -- In America, having a mental illness has become a crime. One in four fatal police shootings involves a person with mental illness. The country's three largest providers of mental health care are not hospitals, but jails. As many as half the people in US jails and prisons have a psychiatric disorder. In Insane, journalist Alisa Roth goes deep inside the criminal justice system to reveal how America's tough-on-crime policies have transformed it into a warehouse for people with mental illness, one where prisoners are denied proper treatment, abused, and punished in ways that make them sicker. Investigating police departments, courts, jails, and emergency health-care facilities across the country, Roth provides the first nationwide account of this mental health crisis--and uncovers the hidden forces behind it.

Mind museums : Former Asylums and the Heritage of Mental Health by Lanz F. (2024) -- Mind Museums offer a fresh perspective on the heritage of mental health, bringing museums into sharp focus by examining former psychiatric asylums that have been converted into museums and exploring their potential to raise awareness and dismantle the stigma surrounding mental health. By uncovering the power of these heritage sites in facilitating discussions on mental health, civility, and care, Lanz provides new insights into the emotive capacity of the museum and visitors' reflexivity at place-based memory sites.

The Unapologetic Guide to Black Mental Health by Walker, R & Akbar, N. (2020) -- There is an unaddressed Black mental health crisis in our world today. This book is an exploration of Black mental health in today’s world, the forces that have undermined mental health progress for African Americans, and what needs to happen for African Americans to heal psychological distress, find community, and undo years of stigma and marginalization in order to access effective mental health care. Psychologist and African American mental health expert Rheeda Walker offers important information on the mental health crisis in the Black community, how to combat stigma, spot potential mental illness, how to practice emotional wellness, and how to get the best care possible in a system steeped in racial bias.

21st Century Media and Female Mental Health Profitable Vulnerability and Sad Girl Culture by Thelandersson, F. (2023) -- While early 21st century media was marked by a distinct focus on happiness, productivity, and success, during the 2010s negative feelings and discussions around mental health have become increasingly common in that same media landscape. This book traces this turn to sadness in women’s media culture and shows that it emerged indirectly as a result of a culture overtly focused on happiness. Using discourse analysis and digital ethnography to study contemporary representations of mental illness and sadness in Western popular media and social media, this book takes a feminist media studies approach to popular discourse, understanding the conversations happening around mental health in these sites to function as scripts for how to think about and experience mental illness and sadness.

References:

“Mental Health Awareness Month.” NAMI, 24 April 2024. https://www.nami.org/Get-Involved/Awareness-Events/Mental-Health-Awareness-Month/. 

“Mental Health by the Numbers.” NAMI, 3 May 2024. 

https://www.nami.org/about-mental-illness/mental-health-by-the-numbers/. 

Public Libraries Singapore. “Exploring Mental Illness in Literature.” Medium. 4 February, 2021.

https://medium.com/publiclibrarysg/exploring-mental-illness-in-literature-66f3dfde57a3. 

"Blíndur er bóklaus ma∂ur. Blind is a man without a book.”

-- Icelandic proverb [1]

This summer I am traveling to Iceland. In addition to enjoying a much needed spiritual journey (cue Björk’s “Wanderlust”), I will be visiting several libraries in concert with a course I am taking during the second summer term, LIS 760 International Libraries. 

It is my goal to visit the Reykjavík City Library, the National and University Library of Iceland, and The Nordic House – all of which can be found in the small country’s capital. Somewhere in between worshiping the Northern Lights and finding out once and for all whether the Huldufólk truly exist, I aim to familiarize myself with “the enormous contribution to Western culture made by this small nation on the fringes of European civilization.” [2]

The Nordic House

The Nordic House has a fascinating scope in that its goal is “to foster and support cultural connections between Iceland and other Nordic countries.” [3] The center accomplishes this through diverse programs, cultural activities, and events. I love Robijn’s description in an article for Bookbird: “The blue rooftop merges with the mountain range to the south, and the brightness, transparency, and warmth reflect the objective of the Nordic House.” Naturally, a library containing books and media in all Scandinavian languages is the “heart of the house.”

As an MLIS-MAYL (Youth Literature) dual major here at Dominican, the Nordic House’s focus on children’s literature is of particular interest to me. The center biannually hosts the Mýrin International Children’s Literature Festival, which is organized by several Icelandic literary organizations. In 2016, the Festival symposium included topics such as the influence of Nordic myths on the self-image of Nordic YA-literature, a subject I have considered exploring for my MAYL thesis. A recent exhibit at the children’s library, “Under the Polar Ice,” educates children and families about animals and plant survival in the coldest region of the world, how they are all connected, and how humans can be better caretakers of the environment.

The National and University Library of Iceland

Iceland’s National Library houses nearly every copy of works published in Iceland. This complete catalog benefits posterity and research. [4] In addition to the National Collection, the first floor contains manuscripts and the Women’s History Archive. The main service and circulation desk is on the second floor, along with the UI Center for Writing. Journals, theses and quiet workspaces are on the third floor, while the fourth floor houses music, films, and course reserves. The 150 lockers for guests to store working documents strikes me as a unique feature. [5]

I enjoyed shuffling through the University libguides. While many common items exist such as Course reserves, Interlibrary loans and New titles in the collection, other guides such as Doctoral students, International students, and Viking and Medieval Norse Studies caught my eye. The library also hosts various events and workshops, such as the recently held Workshop Against Procrastination where students gained advice on academic writing, encouragement via writing sprints, and individual assistance for citation and reference management tools like EndNote. 

Reykjavík City Library

In the video below, I appreciate how the main interviewee, Valli, cherishes the meaning of bókavörður -- a word that means “librarian,” but more specifically translates to “book guardian.” As guardians of books, staff at the Reykjavík City Library perform many tasks familiar to their counterparts in America: recommending books for patrons to read, helping customers make copies, or simply charge their phones. Just like in the states, the library proves to be a haven for those who need a safe, warm place if they have no other home to go to. [6]

Several times, the documentary describes the library as a good place to go to if one is experiencing loneliness. Some of the programs involve games or other social events that provide a low-stress opportunity for people who are learning Icelandic to practice. When it comes to working at the library, Valli feels it does not necessarily have the gendered stereotype that might exist in other cultures. And I found the leadership structure particularly interesting. There are two bosses at the city branch, but “outside of that, I don’t think there’s an hierarchy.”

I wonder if there are some aspects of librarianship modeled here that could benefit libraries in the United States. Perhaps libraries should make a stronger effort to present themselves as a great career path for more diverse populations. There might be even more that libraries can do as institutions to focus on youth learning and literacy. It's easy to romanticize a country that bears the nickname "Land of Fire and Ice." However, Iceland has a truly unique literary heritage and fascinating history. I can't wait to step into their houses of learning with an open mind and see what lovely lessons I may come away with.

References

[1] Kent, H. (2013). Burial Rites. Little, Brown and Company.

[2] Roth, R. (2019, November 26). Icelandic and Faroese collections at the Library of Congress. LOC. https://www.loc.gov/rr/european/coll/icel.html

[3] Robijn, M. (2017). The Nordic House in Reykjavík, Iceland: A house with a big heart for children and literature. Bookbird, 55(3), 36-41. https://doi.org/10.1353/bkb.2017.0038

[4] Law and Regulations in the Library. (n.d.). National and University of Iceland. Retrieved April 30, 2024, from https://landsbokasafn.is/index.php?page=law-and-regulations

[5] Law and Regulations in the Library. (n.d.). National and University of Iceland. Retrieved April 30, 2024, from https://landsbokasafn.is/index.php?page=facilities

[6] Chen, Jiaqian. (2021, April 26). Reykjavik public library – Documentary in Iceland. [video]. Youtube. https://youtu.be/QSwNqFu2VGQ?si=s0AsiLc4gIwtY8uy

For Further Reading

Lauramarsch. General Recommendations: Iceland. CPL.