RLUK DSF: “Just Chill” Thinking Fast & Slow about Artificial Intelligence

RLUK’s Digital Shift Forum brings together colleagues from across the information, research, cultural and heritage communities, and third and commercial sectors, to discuss the future of the digital shift in collections, services, and audiences.

The series aims to promote cross-sector discussion and debate, to enable knowledge exchange, and inspire collaborative endeavour across sectors and communities, for the benefit of RLUK members and the wider research and information management communities.

RLUK's Digital Shift Forum events are free to attend and open to all.

“Just Chill” Thinking Fast and Slow about Artificial Intelligence in Libraries

Wednesday 8 October, 14:00 – 15:00 (BST), 15:00 – 16:00 (CEST/SAST), 16:00 – 17:00 (EEST), 06:00 – 07:00 (PDT), 09:00 – 10:00 (EDT), 21:00 – 22:00 (AWST/CST)

The AI and New Digital Frontiers theme for the RLUK Digital Shift Forum will explore how research libraries can lead and support the use of AI.

This first session in this theme is from Professor Paul Gooding who will explore the impact and adoption of AI in libraries through the lens of time: specifically how the principles of fast and slow design might allow us to spend productive time with AI.

Artificial Intelligence is in a hype phase currently, and libraries are not immune to the effects of this. The talk will explore the hype cycle for technologies, and look at how libraries have dealt with the excitement around digital technologies in the past, to better understand our current technological moment.

It will then use examples from Paul’s previous work on usage of digitised newspapers, and development of principles for respectful AI requirements elicitation in libraries, to illustrate the ways in which, despite our best intentions, technology often doesn’t work for our users. Finally, it will propose a set of principles for determining “fast” and “slow” approaches to AI implementation in the library sector that may allow us to better respond to the challenges of implementing new technologies.

About the speaker

Paul Gooding is Professor of Library Studies and Digital Scholarship at the University of Glasgow. His research focuses on evaluating the impact of digital library collections on institutions and users, and how library and archival collections can be harnessed for innovative reuse in the Digital Humanities. He has most recently led an AHRC-funded project to explore the development of inclusive requirements elicitation for AI tools that may seek to use Indigenous knowledges held in libraries. He has a track record of publications that span Digital Humanities and Library and Information Studies, including forthcoming edited books on Artificial Intelligence in libraries (UCL Press, 2025), and the use of library catalogue data in research (Facet Publishing, 2025).

Joining details

This event will be held via Zoom webinar. Attendees will be sent a joining link the day before and 30 minutes before the event and should ensure their email is entered correctly in the registration form. Attendees should check junk folders if no joining email is received.