How Libraries Are Adapting to and Leading in AI

Three talks from CNI on library leadership during big AI changes

Posted on February 25, 2026 in Blog Posts

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LibTech Insights editor
A video playing of a talk from CNI on library technology

The Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) released a trove of talks from its fall 2025 membership meeting, covering many library technology topics, none more than AI. In this post, we want to share some of the talks we didn’t want you to miss and give some perspective on ongoing discussions about AI in libraries and research institutions. Many librarians have conflicting attitudes toward AI. These conflicts aren’t just between groups of people (e.g., boosters and refuseniks), but are often internal (e.g., justified use and unnecessary use). This meeting offered a space to give air to these attitudes and judge what librarians can offer AI and what AI can offer librarians (and what it can’t).

Below are some of our picks from this conference.

“A Landscape of AI in Libraries, or ‘What Librarians Talk About When They Talk About AI'”

The opening plenary address is a natural starting point for this tour. Ben Lee, an assistant professor in the information school at the University of Washington, tries to balance and assess librarians’ many conflicting thoughts and feelings. His talk reminds us that AI existed in libraries before ChatGPT, with OCR digitization, discovery systems, and applications, before getting into recent poll numbers from ARL into librarians’ attitudes and implementation experiences. Throughout, he offers an overview of ongoing librarian research into AI, creating a nice bibliography for anyone interested in learning more about the strengths of AI adoption and AI refusal.

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“Discovery and Use Reimagined: Connecting Scholarly Collections and Artificial Intelligence”

AI is changing how students and scholars search for information. Instead of beginning the research process on the library’s search bar (or Wikipedia), many researchers will begin by typing their query into an AI chatbot. (Indeed, ChatGPT’s research data show that people are increasingly using AI as a search engine replacement.) Rather than discourage students from beginning their research journeys with an AI conversation, this panel considers how discovery should be reconceived in an AI-first environment. Partnered with this talk is a presentation on an effort at Northeastern University to equip Anthropic’s Claude chatbot with library resources.

“Getting to the Table: Library Leading Artificial Intelligence by Example” (Lightning Talk)

This video contains several interesting lighting talks, but the one we wanted to highlight is Doralyn Rossmann’s talk on leading by example. It has become almost a platitude to say that librarians should lead AI conversations and policies on campus, but it’s far harder to define what this actually means or entails. Rossmann highlights several ways that the Montana State University Library has shown great leadership on campus in all things AI, from creating an AI lab to forging partnerships. Her talk is inspiring and practical—and all of five minutes long.

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