One year later: Studying the AI in the AIR
The Whatcom Community College Library turned the AI Research Assistant in the ExLibris Primo discovery service live in May 2025. The Research Assistant is located behind an institutional login on the main menu of the discovery layer. While we have not strategically marketed or consistently taught to the tool, we have found that a significant portion of our campus population have 'discovered' and used the Research Assistant over the last calendar year. In the winter/ spring quarters of 2025 and 2026 we conducted focus groups on this tool with student participants in a program run by our Office of Institutional Research and Assessment (AIR). In this presentation, I will share campus-wide data related to user behavior as well as AIR student insight into the efficacy and ethics of using this AI tool. Based on that data, our library has begun to revise and/or realign certain instructional material to further facilitate use of this AI tool, particularly at the beginning of the research process.
Participants will be able to enable the AI Research Assistant tool in their own environments as well as access or analyze data generated by the tool from within the library system. Participants will also be able to brainstorm to devise or revise their own AI research questions in light of what one colleague found was possible with limited time, student population, and general administrative access to the AI tools themselves.
Presenter Bio
abby koehler is the Systems Librarian at the Whatcom Community College Library in Bellingham, Washington.
Please join us on Wednesday, May 6, at 1:30pm-2:30pm
Sponsored by Answerland; the Oregon Library Association’s Reference and Legal Reference Roundtables; and the Institute of Museum and Library Services through the Library Services and Technology Act, administered by the State Library of Oregon.