Tricia (she/her) (00:01.257)
I love libraries, I love librarians, so it's a joy to have not one, not two, but three folks here to talk about the perspective of the library. Part of what I really love about libraries, of course, is that they are a space for community building, for idea exchange, and I think particularly during this new era of AI, there's kind of work to be done to ensure that remains true.

we see the library as a space to learn from one another and to come together and do some collaborative work together. I'm wondering what thoughts you all have on what we can do in libraries to ensure that's true and what work might you want to see prioritized in libraries when it comes to AI.

Zakir (00:51.006)
Well, I think the library is always actually the community have for technology promotions, you build up the capacity for the community, be it is a school library or a public library. I also emphasize actually empowering the librarians themselves in their capacity. without a qualified and, you know, how to say, powerful librarians, a library is just building all the books and things like that. So librarians themselves need to improve their AI literacy and engagement with AI.

And that's what actually we need to focus because librarians for the years, like they're empowering the information literacy, digital literacy and media literacy. And AI just is an addition to that. So they know actually how to promote that. know because information literacy, have the information evaluation and how to empower our community and things like that. So I would just build up the AI literacy for the librarians.

Also, librarians can be advocate for protecting the privacy and advocate for ethics in the community. AI is there and we kind of avoid it, but how we can actually build up the understanding of our community of their privacy, it can be personal privacy or it can be privacy for the community as well as how we can actually build up a place and also put our our

ideas to the policymakers that how librarians as a community and library as an organization support in this journey to the community of the policymakers, researcher and the government itself. As you probably know that UNESCO, for example, mean, emphasize and recommended that this national curriculum should add the AI literacy in their curriculum as well as we have the World Economic Forum.

Recently we did a research actually with the school librarians and we received so far 292 responses and it seems that like school librarians are still in the midst of you know their AI literacy build-up capacity. So I believe that like we still have room to improve and if we can actually take if we want to take the lead on this then there is no other way that to build up our own capacity.

Zakir (03:13.352)
to lead the AI revolution or to lead the AI enterprise in schools.

Danny Glasner (03:25.114)
So two points. One, to build off of what Sakir was saying, that libraries, both school and public, have traditionally been places to pilot new technologies. you know, AI shouldn't...

change that, whether you know it's more recently VR and other recent technologies that have come out, you know you can buy one or two for a library and give the school an opportunity to work out the kinks with things and see the efficacy of it and and whether you know a school should be putting them in a greater scale into the classrooms and that sort of thing. My second point is that like

Libraries and librarians are community builders and AI doesn't change that one iota. Whether you are integrating AI into something that you're doing or you're not, we are bringing people together. You know, when we're asked in conferences or that sort of thing, what is our why? My why, I borrowed from Katie Day my first year when I became a librarian, which is my why is connecting people and ideas.

And that doesn't matter whether we're in an AI world or prior to an AR world or a future AR world, which is way more involved.

Heeru Bhojwani (04:53.244)
To add to what Danny says, I totally agree. Technology, AI, evolves, change. But as community builders and libraries are community builders, and librarians are the main...

important soul of the library. And I think by changing, I would like to recommend changing the name library to a learning common, because I think that would bring about a change in the way people perceive like libraries. I would like to look at libraries as a space that forces communities of interest where individuals with similar interests, curiosities come together, people with passion, deepen their passion,

for learning and also spark that curiosity and feed the curiosity. In the age of AI, I think the vision would be a library, place for students, educators, community members coming together, exchanging ideas, building skills and knowledge in a very shared interactive space. And taking it a little further, I would like to see the space to be like an interdisciplinary learning space where there's a lot of cultural exchange.

global awareness and just bringing about and through a network of ideas and skills and knowledge. That's how I feel.

Tricia (she/her) (06:20.577)
I love that idea kind of of, yeah, that's a really interesting idea of, you know, does the term library not necessarily reflect everything that's happening in that space? That's really interesting. I love how it's both looking at the library as a bridge to the future, but also, Zakir, as you pointed out, very much a connection with the past. Libraries have always been a space for information literacy, for media literacy.

of course they will be a space for AI literacy. You you've always been tasked with helping people understand what does it mean to digest information? And that's not static because the text in which information comes to us keeps changing, right? The technology that is a book has evolved. You know, we have graphic novels that they look totally different from graphic novels, you know, of a decade ago. So when it comes to

helping educators discuss information literacy to understanding what it means, you know, I use that word digest because you're hopefully taking the nutrition out of the text type, whatever it is. You have some kind of processing mechanism for letting go of the stuff that's not nutritional and it makes you want to build more information. What are you hoping that we discuss more in K-12 education or even higher ed when we're talking about

AI and information literacy. What are some topics or questions that you would love to see explored a little bit better?

Danny Glasner (07:58.834)
I'll begin on this one. So first, I view librarians as the frontliners of information. I think you just kind of spelled it out yourself. So to that end, we need to be leaders when it comes to A.I. education. But in the same way that digital citizenship, digital literacy, teaching skills,

can't be done in isolation and on occasion. I would argue that time is what we need. AI needs to be done throughout the year. It needs to be integrated. It can't be isolated. It has to have context. We need to get across to both the faculty and the staff that it's not a monolith, because I think a lot of people kind of just look at it that way.

It's all these little, big and small pieces and that we kind of have to spend time in order to get context and nuance into the discussion. So time is what I'd ask for, to do all kinds of things.

Heeru Bhojwani (09:11.11)
To add to what Janice says, a librarian, I see AI information literacy very deeply connected. I think the algorithms are really influencing the way we see things, we read things, we learn how AI actually curates and even manipulates information. And I think it's important for students and educators to see that. My dream is to actually collaborate with teachers and help them, help students

develop those skill sets that we talk about where they are able to see the different biases that maneuvered. I would like to use the word maneuvered instead of manipulated by AI. And I think with all the different kinds of thinking, think lateral thinking is a new terminology that I've just learned. It's an old term, but looking at sources differently, more than a one way pathway, I'd like to have

students consider multiple perspectives. And most importantly is also thinking about what Dr. Sarah Elaine Eaton, who's a professor, write and a speaker, and she strongly advocates for academic integrity. And she believes, I'm going to read this out because I really think this is important. She says that in the near future, hybrid human AI writing will become very normal.

Human creativity is enhanced now, is further enhanced, lives, language barriers will disappear. Human cannot relinquish responsibility, but control. Attribution will remain very, very important. And most importantly, the historical definition of plagiarism will need to be evolved.

And I think if we are looking at all of that, then partnership with educators is so important to define what patriotism is and what ethical writing is. What are your views, Zakir?

Zakir (11:21.854)
Hey, thank you. think that's an excellent idea, actually, what you and Danny said. What I said, actually, that librarians lead the information literacy programs or academic integrity, for example, what Hader said. I am very familiar with Dr. Sarah Aitens research we have done, you know, worked together in the past. So as you know, that like particularly in the IB schools, there are teacher librarians or school librarians who lead the academic integrity initiatives.

And we train the teachers and the students how to do the things, know, how to, what is called promote the academic integrity across the curriculum. And I think that's where we can actually connect AI citizenship. Let's talk about AI citizenship actually that like can build up the capacity of the students and teachers alike to really empower them using the AI technology. So I think if librarians can build up their capacity, they can.

offer workshop to the colleagues and that's so they can promote the AI related stuff, especially AI literacy and AI citizenship in their context. And other things I would like to say that as you see that librarians are empowering themselves, but what area they should empower, like if we want to get really empower ourselves, then I would say

we need to think about how we can promote the way we promote information literacy skills, for example, starting from the inquiry questions, investigations, and then what is called analysis of the things. I would start with AI literacy as prompt engineering, and then you go to understanding the bias and misinformation of the prompts, outcomes, and things like that.

if we can actually give this input to our colleagues, they actually are in the classroom more than us. So if we start or we should take the lead to train the educators, like for example, classroom teachers in this context, they will be more empowered and our community as a whole will be more literate and they will be the, know, they will get the citizenship. Again, I will get back to our study that we are currently doing. It seems that like many of our colleagues are not

Zakir (13:41.854)
in that stage of time, because we see that like only 39 % and actually 24.6 % of school library professionals are saying that they are confident in their knowledge and capacity in terms of sharing the knowledge about AI or train AI to their colleagues and students. So again, from the previous questions, what I was talking that we need to empower ourselves to flourish

the whole school library spectrum and the school library professions in this context.

Danny Glasner (14:21.678)
Yeah, what I was going to build off of what both of them saying, one, the same way that digital citizenship is citizenship and things that you shouldn't do in the real world, you shouldn't do in the digital world, is the same way with global citizenship, things that you look at from a global perspective, you can take back to your own local context.

I think the same thing applies to AI citizenship as well. I think it's when I'm doing workshops within my school, that's kind of, I'm starting with citizenship. It just is looking at it from a slightly different context. But really, if it's something that you wouldn't do in the real world, then you shouldn't be doing it in the digital world. If it's something you wouldn't do prior to AI, then it's not something you should be doing with AI if your morals tell you that.

That doesn't sound right. The second thing is that I think the leaders of AI in education in schools...

can play a very important role in one of the best things that AI can do. And that's help move things from product to process based as far as learning goes. I think a lot of progressive educators have been wanting this change for a long time. And I think AI is some ways the catalyst for that. So being leaders and helping move that along, I think is definitely something that librarians can take part in.

Tricia (she/her) (15:51.847)
And I also wonder, you know, to what extent you see books themselves as a technology that's a part of this. You know, I, I always advocate for, if you want to understand AI, you actually have to try things out with it. You have to see where it works for you, where it doesn't. But I also, you know, I'm a little bit biased here because I'm an avid reader. I've always loved reading. So that's also an aspect of the learning for me. And what the three of you are talking about had me thinking about two books.

Zakir (16:09.466)
you

Tricia (she/her) (16:21.833)
Hiro, your point on understanding algorithms and their influence. There's an excellent book that came out last year by Kyle Chakra called Filter World. And it really goes into just how influential algorithms can be in shaping our taste in music or film or books. And the author of that book kind of proposes, do an algorithmic cleanse.

really take some time to try and only pick the media you consume based on human recommendations. And ironically, this is something I try to do because of course I listen to Spotify and I'll be honest, I'm lazy sometimes. just, what is right there when I open up the app? Okay, great, I'll listen to that. So something that I've been trying to do more and more of is

talk to my local librarian, tell them what I'm interested in and just take a recommendation from them. And again, it's a small thing, but we're talking about control and still wanting human autonomy and it's just an interesting experiment. The other book that I feel like I've not been able to stop talking about is by Dr. Kate Darling, it's called The New Breed. And she gives us this great analogy that essentially AI,

we should think of AI the same way that we've thought about companion animals. And she goes way back into the history of, you know, we've used dogs in the military, we've used whales in the military, we're going to use this technology in the same way. It's going to help us, it's not going to replace us, but it's going to help us do a little bit more than we can do on our own. And it's such a great analogy, it's really useful. And critically, I'd say,

both of those books got me curious to learn more. So I wonder what role you see books playing in this learning as well, that it's not just about learning the tools, understanding how to use them, but also like watching out for what others are saying. There's gonna be a huge range of perspectives. And I wonder to what extent you feel like it's also your job to curate because the world doesn't have a shortage.

Tricia (she/her) (18:38.663)
of hot takes on AI, right? There's so many books. Is there a text that comes to mind for you? Or what are your thoughts on making sure you're showcasing some of those stories for people to learn more from too?

Heeru Bhojwani (18:52.888)
In fact, Shishya, you have the nail on the head. We're talking a lot of people are reading nonfiction text to understand AI and the algorithms and all of that. But I came across this book recently. It's an old book. It was published as a Booker Prize winner in 2021. It's called Clara and the Sun by Kazu Ishigura. This novel talks about this perspective of Clara, who is an artificial friend, just like you mentioned.

We have a dog as a pet. And this is an artificial friend created to accompany children. And it raises questions about AI's role in society, empathy, and what it really truly means to be human. The other book I'm really curious and I'm reading it, I just ordered it right now, is this book by S.P. Divya. She's a Hugo Award nominee and her book is called Machinehood. It talks about the zero dark 30

that meets the social network. It's a science fiction thriller, no doubt. But it explores beliefs about AI, labor, economy, and it talks about what is our vision with AI and in our everyday life. And the other book which I recently ordered on Sora and Overdrive for the children, was this book which called Hardwired. It's a story about this typical geek young boy

and he plays video games and then he wakes up after an episode and he sees his late father sitting on his bed and he learns the truth that his father is not human but a quantum intelligence project and then this science fiction unfolds and issues about privacy, free will and the characteristics of what makes a real human human is being talked about. A great discussion for

high school students. And of course, how can you not have a love story? No one here is lonely by Sarah Everett. She talks about romance, online dating, and the future of dating somebody who's not alive anymore, and what it means by keeping and holding onto those memories. And so besides the young adults and the adults, there's a lot coming out in the elementary world. We have Fuzzy, we have Boy and Boy.

Heeru Bhojwani (21:18.886)
Super Potato series, I haven't read that, but I heard it's very popular, and the Frankenstein. Those are some of the things I've been looking and reading and curating for my students. What about you, Danny?

Danny Glasner (21:33.174)
So like Hiro, I also looked at it from a fiction perspective more than a nonfiction perspective. mean personally I'm taking in a ton of nonfiction and currently I'm finishing off listening to Yuval Nohara's latest Nexus, which is, you know, I'm sure a number of you have probably read. Certainly lots of people have already. But the interesting part to me kind of juxtaposes Trisha with what

the new breed is kind of stating, right? Because Yolande O'Rourke is talking about the worry of AI being agents and not having their own ability to do things that humans are not guiding in any way, which is very not pet-like.

But the two that I wanted to kind of focus on are both fiction. One isn't really that AI at all, but the analogies are great. So it's like, it's a pretty well-known book, The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl by Stacey McNulty. And why it's a good comparison is because she's a girl who gets struck by lightning and then becomes someone with mathematical alien intelligence.

Right? And so now you're living in a world where somebody can do supernatural mathematical abilities. And that actually dovetails quite nicely with how AI enters, at least in some forms. So yeah, I thought that was a great one. And it's been around for a while and it's a very popular book. And people to reread it, looking through the lens of AI, I think would be very interesting.

The other one is a very obvious one, but Wild Robot. And very popular, right? The third movie came out, actually, I met Peter Brown a little over a year ago in Toronto. It was his first time in Canada, and he came to...

Danny Glasner (23:37.388)
to a bookstore in the West End of Toronto and I got to hear him speak and ask questions and he's such a lovely human. But like that basic idea of looking at artificial intelligence and machine learning and robot capabilities in like an age appropriate way, because so much of the AI stuff is geared towards

Older kids, here we gave some good examples to the contrary, but yeah, fiction can often be a great entry point in making things accessible for kids.

Zakir (24:16.67)
Well, I'll just start with the least one is the book that I read actually even more long ago, AI Emerge is what is like 2015, 16. The book was published actually back in 2014, a book called The Circle written by Dave Eggers. The book is really interesting in the sense that like, you know, the protagonist, girl, Mayer Holland, she was hired by a technology company, a big

technology company called Circle. And when she started the job, she think that, I got something that like is a lifetime opportunity. But once she learned that, like how the technology company actually crossing the boundaries of privacy and then doing the surveillance data and technology, and then she get start getting worried. And that's really something that I think connected these days when AI is here, but it's still, we are worried about our personal privacy and academic integrity or

know, other technological influences. And as you probably know, also, like if I can connect with something, there are many government actually are worried about like how they can develop the policies in terms of that. So far I know that like there are many countries, about 70 actually according to OCED, develop their AI policy, but still there are more technologies for learners than the educators. So.

There some research actually are suggesting that we need to really add the research educators in the discussion of the technology. And this is something also, again, we can connect the books that are written fictionally, how actually things should be connected with every stakeholders to uphold the privacy and the technology for the betterment.

Tricia (she/her) (26:13.139)
Yeah, and you know, what's interesting is I think sometimes we always say like nonfiction and fiction are separate, but they influence each other. You know, even the invention of chat GPT itself, one of the computer scientists who was working on the transformer, you know, shared a little anecdote. I don't know if you're familiar with the sci-fi film Arrival.

which it's like this alien language, they're trying to decode it. And the computer scientists talked about like that really influenced my approach to working on the transformer. So I love the examples that you shared. The only one that I would add to it is there's a really great collection of short stories. It's called AI 2041, 10 Visions for our Future. It's an amazing collection of short stories.

And your point about fiction being such a wonderful driver for conversation, I think it's also like almost the psychological difference between sometimes nonfiction about AI might seem like, but do I need to be an expert or do I need to be an air quotes techie person to enjoy this? I understand sometimes people see that as a barrier, whereas fiction really is, hey, no expertise required.

join the story, let's chat about it. So thank you for giving us more recommendations. I think it is gonna really be that blend of fiction and nonfiction that gets more people talking. Over and over again in this conversation, all three of you have been talking about the ways we can learn from libraries, the ways that librarians have to see themselves as leaders in this moment. I'm wondering what's coming up for you in 2025 where

Again, you're learning with the community or, know, again, you're really doing the work that will position the library as a hub of leadership for this moment of AI. What's just around the corner for you in 2025?

Zakir (28:15.198)
Well, I'll start with that, so.

Danny Glasner (28:15.79)
Want me to get started? go ahead, secure.

Heeru Bhojwani (28:15.962)
Zakir (28:19.582)
Well, I see that like we have just recently completed our IASL International Association of School Library Conference. So in 2025, have the conference most likely is going to be a physical conference. And also actually we have ALA conference in the US and actually I'm going to present my AI citizenship framework there. So, yeah.

Heeru Bhojwani (28:45.212)
Great. Jenny, do you want to talk about the 21st century in Hong Kong?

Danny Glasner (28:55.078)
Sure, I will lead you in and then I'll come back to some other things. Yeah, so we've had a dedicated librarian mini conference and library tour with 21st Century Learning in Hong Kong since 2017. COVID made us go online for a few years, but we're now, this will be the second year again that we are back.

in person in February of 25 and Hiro is one of the people presenting. Maybe she can tell us what she's presenting on.

Heeru Bhojwani (29:28.476)
I'm going to be presenting on the ethical use of information and what that means in the new AI world. Like I said earlier, the definition of plagiarism is going to evolve. It's changing. looking at process rather than product. And then we talked about UNESCO has brought up some ideas about ethical use. have the Turnitin Guide, a big company talking about the ethical use. the idea is also looking at the

process rather than the product. And I think more and more by 2025, people, and schools will become comfortable using the process rather than the product. I think it's evolving slowly and I hope to see you all there.

Danny Glasner (30:17.966)
Yeah, so a couple more things to talk about. So one, as part of 21st Century Learning, they do a lot of these online symposiums, like two and a half hours long. So I'm organizing two of them coming up in March.

March 22nd is for Asia and Asia Pacific region and the wonderful Leon Fers is keynoting. And we'll have lots of librarians and ed tech people presenting then. The following Saturday, the 29th.

It will be for the Americas and Africa and Europe. And the fabulous Jason Guglia will be keynote and leading on that. And again, we have lots of librarians and tech who will be presenting on that. That's two and a half hours on a Saturday. We'll be promoting that later. what I also wanted to talk about, so Zakir, Katie Day and a number of us started a grassroots organization called INTLEAD, which is International Teacher Librarians League.

in 2017. And we had a Moodle that we had set up and we took the Moodle down in December of 23. But we just built a groups.io.

forum group and part of the reason why I'm speaking is there is an AI forum that Zakir and I are leading to talk about AI with IB, AI in general in education and then there is lots of other forums that for global literature, for social-emotional learning led by the wonderful you know Dr. Myra Bakhsal and global lit by Karen DeVries and

Danny Glasner (32:03.154)
Yeah, so that just got started up recently. I can include a link to you afterwards for it. But yeah, a great opportunity for sharing, which is kind of a big part of what all this discussion was about.

Zakir (32:22.769)
I think.

Heeru Bhojwani (32:29.712)
We have an organization in India and the South Asian group. It's called the Librarian Association. We hold many conferences in India for Librarians and basically upskilling them in technology, citizenship, literacy, picture books, everything from CBSE schools to local curriculum. And it's called the Librarian Association. Anybody who's willing to join can send you the link.

We have a little WhatsApp group. have many workshops online that are very easily priced in the needs of the third world countries.

Zakir (33:11.198)
Yeah, that's an excellent thing, actually. Just want to thank you, Heyru and others, those who are actually organizing this stuff. Because the more practitioners we actually involve in the research of AI or school librarianships, the better we will be able to make the people understand that how school libraries and school librarians are actually promoting the technology integration as well as what are their contributions in the wider educational context.

Tricia (she/her) (33:37.803)
Yeah, I think that's kind of a perfect note to wrap up on that, you we need as many opportunities to bring people to come together, to ask questions, to share their uncertainties. You know, what I think is really important that all three of you have touched on, it's not necessarily like having the right answer, but it's having the necessary conversations. So thank you to all three of you for providing so many opportunities for educators to do that.

Links about those opportunities will be in the show notes. Thank you so much, all three of you for sharing and lending some of your expertise today. I really appreciate it.

Heeru Bhojwani (34:15.44)
having all of us together and thank you for being so open and so welcoming to us librarians. Thank you very much. Thank you from India.

Zakir (34:15.964)
Thanks for having us.