Confirming the query search method: Balancing AI advancements in reference services

Nakashima, Sarah; Irvin, Vanessa

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/130746 Copy

Description

Title

Confirming the query search method: Balancing AI advancements in reference services

Author(s)

• Nakashima, Sarah
• Irvin, Vanessa

Issue Date

2024-10-16

Keyword(s)

• artificial intelligence (AI)
• pedagogy
• praxis
• query search method (QSM)
• reference
• ontologies

Abstract

Although artificial intelligence (AI) has quickly become a tool that offers quick, simplistic answers to reference questions (Chen, 2023), in this paper, we interrogate AI’s ability to consider the human-to-human interpersonal nuances that occur and are vital to answering queries. We ask: what is most essential for reference services - human knowledge sharing or the machine’s artificial intelligence? AI, as a mechanistic language model, cannot discern the subtleties of humanity’s questions; AI itself admits that librarians are more efficient at answering reference queries from a humanistic approach and lens (Yang & Mason, 2023). This paper is the second part of our introduction to our methodology for reference services, the Query Search Method (QSM). We present conceptual substantiation that, when enacted, the QSM can incorporate AI as an addition to the librarian’s toolbox for honoring patrons’ ways of knowing that, through the sententiousness of the human experience, invariably seek knowledge beyond “the machine.”

Publisher

Association for Library and Information Science Education

Series/Report Name or Number

Proceedings of the ALISE Annual Conference, 2024

Type of Resource

text

Genre of Resource

• Conference Paper
• Presentation

Language

eng

Handle URL

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/130746

DOI

https://doi.org/10.21900/j.alise.2024.1626

Copyright and License Information

• Copyright 2024 Sarah Nakashima, Vanessa Irvin
• This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).

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