librarypunk 167

[Justin]
All right, there we go. It's recording. 

[Kay]
Amazing. 

[Justin]
We are doing this the same way we did it last time, which is here's how... Oh, yeah, I guess I should have told you guys how the show goes. Oh, well. 

[Justin]
[rock music] I'm Justin. No, shut up, my turn. All right. I'm Justin. 

[Emily]
[laughs] 

[Justin]
I don't have that job anymore. My pronouns are he and they. And we have guests. Would you like to introduce yourselves in any order you like? 

[Kay]
[laughs] Um, I'm Kay Slater. I, uh, any pronouns are fine. I am-- I live in Chicago, and I work at a public library. 

[Emily]
Yay. [clapping] 

[Kay]
Yay. [clapping] 

[Emily]
I'm Emily Zurratter. I use she/her pronouns. I'm an academic librarian, and I'm from Michigan, so I'm a Midwesterner. Woo. 

[Emily]
[clapping] 

[Kay]
Woo. 

[Justin]
Yeah. 

[Sarah]
Hi, everyone. My name is Sarah Apedu. I use she/her pronouns. I am a former academic library worker turned PhD student. Um, so I am oriented a little differently to this conversation, but I'm excited to be here. 

[Emily]
Yeah. [clapping] 

[Justin]
Woo. Yeah. 

[Justin]
For the books up, Chicago, 

[Justin]
yeah. [laughs] 

[Kay]
[laughs] 

[Justin]
That's right. [laughs] Dead silence. We always want- 

[Emily]
[laughs] 

[Sarah]
I'm down for Chicago. 

[Justin]
All right. 

[Kay]
Yeah. 

[Justin]
[laughs] 

[Kay]
Yeah. 

[Justin]
Uh, awesome. Thanks so much again to Pilsen Community Books. This place is amazing. This is a- 

[Kay]
Yeah 

[Justin]
... an insane place to just get to use to do a show like this. So thank you all so much. Buy shit on your way out, please. Uh, support the store, a, a worker-owned bookstore. So this was originally a panel that was submitted for ALA. Kay, do you have more info on how that went? [laughs] 

[Kay]
They, they said no. 

[Justin]
[laughs] 

[Kay]
They said, "We don't want you here." Um, yeah, we, the three of us, as well as some other folks, um, that did some contributions to a journal called Library Trends, submitted a panel to ALA, to the ACRL section, and they said, "We don't care that you did peer-reviewed research on this. Sorry. Bye." And then we just said, "Okay, screw it. We'll just do it here instead." 

[Emily]
Woo. 

[Justin]
Yeah. 

[Kay]
So- 

[Emily]
All right. [clapping] 

[Kay]
Yeah. [clapping] 

[Justin]
I, as I got into, like, reading more, like, to plan for the episode, it was really wild how much, like, peer-reviewed work you've done onto this, like, both- 

[Kay]
Mm-hmm 

[Justin]
... like, like, all these papers that, uh, everyone here has worked on, and that that got rejected compared to just... I, I, I noticed some people on Blue Sky were talking about, like, how many, how many, like, pro-AI or AI-related things that were, like, on critical AI- 

[Kay]
Mm-hmm 

[Justin]
... uh, panels there were and, and presentations. So it was just very strange to me that, like, this one didn't go through, particularly because last ALA there was a critical AI panel, uh, and they got an encore presentation because it was so well-received. [laughs] 

[Kay]
Famously. 

[Emily]
Mm-hmm. [laughs] 

[Kay]
Yeah. 

[Justin]
Get, get, get Alison- 

[Kay]
Get Alison. [laughs] Alison of Library Freedom Project is here. 

[Justin]
[laughs] 

[Alison]
The only... Hello. The only reason it was different is that we fully lied in our title and description- [laughs] ... and said, "Oh, we're just gonna talk about ethical issues. People have questions. We're gonna, uh, we're gonna answer..." And then we were like, "We hate everything." [laughs] So the encore... The... We f- We- They put us in a bigger room, and then we had an encore entirely because, you know, people who go to ALA, library workers, want to hear this stuff, but whoever- 

[Kay]
Yeah 

[Emily]
... is, uh, accepting the talks, not so much. 

[Kay]
Yeah. 

[Sarah]
Yeah. 

[Justin]
It seems strange to me that there would be such a, a bias, but I guess that's the first takeaway from this episode, which is, uh, lie on your presentation, uh, description. 

[Kay]
Yeah. 

[Emily]
[laughs] 

[Justin]
Um, let's talk to- 

[Emily]
I, I did that when I applied to be on Clarivate's Academic AI Working Group. 

[Justin]
[laughs] 

[Emily]
I was like, "You need the early career perspective," and didn't really say anything about my critical AI work, and now every meeting I've been in, I've been a problem. [laughs]  

[Kay]
Hell yeah. 

[Emily]
Yeah, if they, like, Googled me, they would've found it. I sent them my CV that has the critical AI things- [laughs] ... but they probably had AI read it, so. [laughs]  So true. 

[Justin]
I mean, I was definitely doing, um... I, I got on a, a focus group early on for research on AI and libraries, and it was so incredibly pro-AI that you couldn't even... Like, every single question was so loaded, it was impossible to say anything critical about AI. And so the only time you could do it was, like, in a free form, like, use a Google Shared Notes, Post-it Notes things- 

[Kay]
Mm-hmm 

[Justin]
... and we all post our little things, and then they just sort of skim over the, the critical parts. So I just stopped going to it 'cause I'm like, "Okay, well, whatever comes out of this is not gonna be, like, scholarly useful information for anyone, so- 

[Kay]
Yeah 

[Justin]
... what's the point of even participating?" Which I feel like is, uh, unfortunate because there is good research being done. 

[Kay]
Mm-hmm. 

[Justin]
Particularly, uh, I think it would be good to start off with... I tried to take all the themes from the articles that you all wrote and trying to, like, put them into some order that kinda made sense. So I have been thinking a lot about AI and fear. Like, why do we fear AI? We just had Hagen Blix on, who wrote a book called Why We Fear AI. Um, there's a lot of really interesting, like, how we talk about AI. And so, uh, Sarah, I kinda wanted to start with you of, like, fear and discourse. Like, how do they dominate how we talk about AI? 

[Sarah]
Mm. Yes. I mean, fear is obviously a mechanism of- Fascism and what I would also refer to and what others have referred to as techno-fascism, which is the knowledge that this moment of AI proliferation and the political moment we're living through happening simultaneously is no mistake. It is on purpose. They need one another. They fuel one another. And so fear operates in these dual ways where it really exploits our very human tendencies to want to be safe and love and accepted, and they take these larger rhetorics, as we've seen all throughout history, all throughout these fascist resi- regimes. Like, this is very much not the first time we are living through something like this where they exploit that fear and weaponize it against us to make us feel powerless, to make us feel like there's nothing we can do, and most importantly, that those who can do something about it are those at the top actually creating the very crisis that we're living through in the first place. So, um, it's a, it's an interesting balancing act when I talk to people between not dismissing the very real fear that lives in their body, but also acknowledging that, yes, a lot of that comes from very real harm, but also a lot of that is this, like, impur- on purpose discourse that is perpetuated from above. I mean, just listen to Elon Musk talk about AI. He'll talk about the apocalypse. He will talk about the end of times. He'll probably throw in a conversation about colonizing Mars in the meantime, and that is intentional, right? It's to get us to look towards them to solve these problems that are supposedly so much bigger than us that we don't have the knowledge, skills, expertise, what have you, whatever they wanna leverage against, you know, librarians. Um, and it's just not true. So yeah, it, it is certainly a difficult balance even for myself, managing my very real fears and anxieties that I have about the world we're living in, but also recognizing that, like, learning to live with that fear, maybe not overcoming it, because sometimes that's too much to ask, but living with it and moving through it- 

[Kay]
Mm-hmm 

[Sarah]
... and building solidarity with others, I think, is one of the best antidotes to fear. 

[Kay]
Yeah, I think you and I, every time we have a research meeting, like the first 30 minutes is just us, like, shooting the shit about [laughs] like what we're afraid of right now, what kind of ridiculous nonsense is happening. So it's, it's very important to be in solidarity with others. 

[Justin]
I think what's really... Could you explain like discourse studies, like give us a quick primer of like how it's used? 'Cause I- 

[Sarah]
Yeah 

[Justin]
... it's not like a methodology I'm really trained in. And as far as I understand it, it's a way of potentially doing consciousness raising. 

[Sarah]
Mm-hmm. 

[Justin]
So could you tie those two things together in my head? 

[Sarah]
Yeah. You know, I-- it, it's been so interesting. I've been working through... I have a philosophy background, and so I like to think through things like that. And I've been really working hard on, you know, bridging these realms between discourse, which is kinda meta, and the world we're living in, right? Because the way we talk about technology, the way we think about it impacts what we think is possible. So for example, if we believe that AI is inevitable, then the possible worlds that we can envision are going to assume AI as a, as a part of it, right? Whereas if we deny these discourses of inevitability, that leaves us the possibility to imagine, in the words of the great Ruha Benjamin, otherwise. Um, so yeah, discourse, you know, so many of us are already talking about discourse. We're talking about the attitudes, the beliefs, the perceptions. Um, and for me, thinking about, you know, the implications for agency are what really matter to me. You know, when we talk about technology and we assume, for example, that it is a fixed artifact that we can use as users but we can't really change, then that severely limits our agency, right? And, you know, these agentic, so to speak, AI tools that literally respond to us I think make it more clear. But it's always been true that we've always had an impact over technology, that it's not just shaping us, that we shape it back. Um, and so I, I, I encourage us all as we interact with vendors and we go to these different presentations to just think about, you know, the ways they talk about technology and what that means for the worlds they think are possible, and does that match with the world you would like to live in, um, and does it help us get there? 

[Justin]
When we're studying discourse, like I fi- I think it's a really interesting way to approach this problem because there's-- it's something you can just take the writing that people do as an artifact. Like, you are saying, "Here's how librarians can do information literacy in an AI age. Here's how we can information literacy our way out of this problem," which is not true. Uh, or at least I, I don't think it's true. Um, so when, when you're, when you're doing like discourse studies, is there a way of finding like how we can actively change the way we talk about something in order to have a material effect? 

[Kay]
I think so. I think if we're like trying to bridge gaps between other disciplines and saying like, "People over here have been talking about this for a number of years. Like, why aren't we talking about this this way?" I think that's a really good way to at least to, at least open up conversations about what could be possible. Um, I'm just thinking about this a lot because we went to Fobazi Ettarh's fr- uh, memorial earlier today, and just like, uh, her ability to like bridge and like break through the barrier of like talking about like what is really important, which is just like 

[Kay]
understanding that like what are the real stakes of the work that we do and not idealizing it, um- 

[Sarah]
Mm-hmm 

[Kay]
... in a way that makes us feel so separated from it all. So I feel like, um, if you haven't read her work, you better fucking do it right now. [laughs] Um, uh, look up Vocational Ah! by Fobazi Ettarh, right? Yeah. 

[Sarah]
Mm-hmm. 

[Kay]
Yeah. But, um, yeah, I think it's important to just sort of like say like-- just point it out and say like, "We're not talking about X, Y, and Z, um, as a discipline." And, um, there's a lot of discussion too, especially among the left or like, you know, leftist theories about like, oh, this is the one way to think about this and the, uh, we shouldn't think about that different way. And, um, I think the point of discourse is just to kind of

[Justin]
Not be so stuck in a singular way of thinking. 

[Sarah]
Mm-hmm. 

[Sarah]
Hold on. 

[Emily]
Yeah, I was just gonna give like an example of a way that the language I've tried to change it. So like trying not to humanize AI with like calling it hallucinations is humanizing it in a way when it's actually something called confabulation, which doesn't have any, like, intention behind it. That's literally what an LLM was built to do. It's built to give you an answer regardless if there is an answer. Um, so, uh, someone at the Maryland Library Conference kinda reshaped it for me in that way. So, and as far as discourse analis- analysis, Sarah and I have been thinking about it for a while. Uh, she's kinda my research partner in all these things. So we've thought about doing discourse analysis on lib guides, kind of like our one specifically, just to kinda limit ourselves somehow in that research. But for a while now, I have been forwarding every single stupid email I get from a vendor with like ridiculous language in it to Sarah, just so we ... Like, and we're trying to write something about it. Think ... There's a lot of thoughts about it, and we're not quite like into a full article yet, but we're trying to do something with vendor language. 

[Sarah]
Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I just wanna jump on Kay's point about, um, Fobazi and vocational awe because, um, you know, that, that's a discourse, right? It's how we talk about librarianship and hopefully how we talk about it has changed and hugely in part to the work that she did. Um, and as I've been in some of these different conversations with vendors over the past day or in different presentations, I mean, vocational awe is alive and well in the way these vendors talk about why librarians are needed in AI, right? You're gonna save us from misinformation. You're gonna save us from the ethical issues somehow, because we can deal with the water usage and the bias and the training data and the stolen materials, right? Somehow we as librarians can solve all of that on our own, uh, with no resources, right? 

[Sarah]
Um, um, and so I'm, I'm very concerned about the ways that this idea of vocational awe is being reified by both ourselves, 'cause it's, it's not just the vendors speaking this way, um, and the ways that it really positions us, A, as having no choice in the matter, and B, again, just sort of like restricts our agency to nothing but, like, preserving the social order, which, you know, Fobazi long ago told us is, um, unacceptable. We can't just be preserving the social order because it's, it's deeply broken. We need to be changing it. So yeah, keep your eye out for vocational awe in these conversations about AI 'cause it's, it's present. 

[Justin]
I mean, it's natural because so much of the language around AI is eschatological. It's, you know, there's an unveiling of the future or there's an end of the current order or- 

[Sarah]
Mm-hmm 

[Justin]
... there's some sort of revelation on the way. 

[Sarah]
Mm-hmm. 

[Justin]
Um, I try every episode not to mention the whole colonizing Mars thing, but it's just like I, I... 

[Sarah]
[laughs] 

[Justin]
I had a guy I had to talk to one-- It was a prophetic-- political science professor. He says, "It's literally terra nullius." I'm like, "There were places where nobody lived. Guess what they did? They brought people there. It doesn't matter that it's terra nullius." Anyway, colonization's bad. It's colonization either way. 

[Sarah]
[laughs] 

[Justin]
Fucking idiot. Um- 

[Sarah]
[laughs] 

[Justin]
But before we go on to agency, 'cause you did talk about agency in your work, libraries are devoted to discourse domination via classification and surveillance. 

[Sarah]
Mm-hmm. 

[Justin]
Uh, you talked about this in, in your article, but how, how do we do that, like, concretely in our day-to-day work? How do we do discourse domination? 

[Sarah]
Mm. Great question. That is from an article by Radford and Radford in 2001 called, um, Discourse of Fear in Library and Information Science, I think is what it's called. 

[Emily]
Mm-hmm. 

[Sarah]
And that was an early analysis of media, and they looked at different media examples and the way librarians were portrayed. And they noticed that the ways librarians are portrayed, as many of you are probably aware of, is this very stern, rule-enforcing, um, sort of person. They also talked about the architecture of the library as well as, like you said, the classification systems. Because ultimately, if we think about what is the purpose of the library, again, Fobazi talks about this in her vocational awe article. The library was created to gatekeep knowledge, to-- the building itself was created to limit access to particular populations. Um, we still struggle with this today as we deal with different social issues and who belongs in the library and who, you know, gets removed from the library depending on different things. Um, so libraries have always served this gatekeeping role. And of course, over the last couple of decades, we've done a lot of work to reckon with what it means to be gatekeepers and how to do that responsibly and maybe even be gate breakers, uh, when we can. But, um, um, 

[Sarah]
sorry, where was I going with this? 

[Justin]
How do we do discourse domination in like our day-to-day work? 

[Sarah]
Yes. And so categories are obviously one thing, right? We've done a lot of work as critical catalogers and thinking about humanizing metadata to think about the ways that, you know, categories aren't fixed even though our information systems treat them as such and AI treats it as such. Computers operate on ones and zeros. They don't deal with messy. They don't deal with ambiguity. They don't deal with in-betweenness, which is what being alive consists of basically. We're always in a state of in-betweenness, um, in various forms. So, um, there's a lot of different ways that we've recognized the ways librarians have enforced white supremacy and classism and all of these things, and this all ties back into artificial intelligence. It is an ideology. It's a system of beliefs. It's really not a technology. There's no one technology we can point to and be like, "That's AI." It's kind of a bunch of different things that we kinda just group under one word, and that's one way we can deal with discursive domination, by recognizing that this thing that is AI isn't a thing at all. It's a system of economics and beliefs and many, many different types of technologies grouped under one. Um, I think that's one way we can deal with some of that discursive domination by recognizing, like, this isn't just one force coming from somewhere. It's a bunch of little things which makes it much more manageable to resist at the same time, I think. 

[Emily]
Mm-hmm. 

[Justin]
Mm-hmm. I wanted to move on then to agency. Um, something you mention, a- and I think it's mentioned a lot, but it's who or what has agency over the trajectory of technical innovation and libraries? Like, we talk about, uh... I, I think a lot of librarians are very interested in jumping on the next new thing. I remember sitting in a meeting one time, and, like, the, the dean of, um, UT San Antonio was like, "All right, I'm off to go, uh, watch a video about blockchain." This was obviously not this year. Um, but how do we... Like, you mention, like, Hauser and other scholars who talk about, like, information systems designers as having, like, inscriptive agency over the truth conditions- 

[Sarah]
Mm 

[Justin]
... um, that are then materialized over, like, technological systems. So I guess it comes again to, like, our, our domination of, and then reification of discourse. Like, how do we plot it into our computer systems and then that affects how, how it comes out? But you've mentioned agency a few times. So, like, what's the most important takeaway about agency and how we talk about it- 

[Sarah]
Mm 

[Justin]
... in regards to AI and libraries? 

[Sarah]
So I will say that, um, 

[Sarah]
uh, I'm trying not to get too in the weeds of, like, ontologies. But basically what I'll say is you can either believe that agency is something we... that is inherent to beings, whether that's people or technologies or animals or whatever, or you can believe that agency's not an inherent property, but an act, which means it cannot be taken away from you. Conditions may constrain it and shape it and impact it, but since it is not a thing that we can have or not have, it is what we do. Um, for me, that opens up these possibilities, because agency means within the littlest, teeniest, tiniest way we can, in some way we are shaping the world back, and that doesn't always look like intentional choices. Like, we are more than just rational beings. We are, like, bodies living in the world. Um, and being able to... And again, it really depends on your conditions, um, which is why I wanna be careful about this, 'cause again, I'm not a practicing librarian. I'm in a very different, uh, position when it comes to my agency, like, as a PhD student. I actually love being a student, 'cause I kinda get to say whatever I want, [laughs] and it'll be interesting to see what happens when I keep doing that as a professor. [laughs] We'll see if I get a job doing this. Um, but yeah, agency is an action. It is not something we have, which also means that technology, in a way, has agency in that it's shaping our world, and we're shaping it back. So, um, I don't know. I think that's all I wanna s- say for now- 

[Justin]
[laughs] 

[Sarah]
... 'cause I don't even know if it's making sense. [laughs] 

[Kay]
You're making so much sense, Sarah. This is amazing. Yeah. 

[Sarah]
Yeah, you're spitting bars. 

[Kay]
Yeah. 

[Sarah]
Okay. 

[Kay]
Yeah. 

[Sarah]
That's good. 

[Kay]
Yeah. [laughs] 

[Justin]
That's the way I feel every week when I'm talking to people, and I'm just like, "Hey, I read your book. Uh, I don't have any of the background you have. Explain it to me." 

[Sarah]
[laughs] 

[Justin]
"Uh, did, did my question make sense? I have no idea." Um, I, I, I do like a lot of the idea... And again, I can see how it's getting into the weeds, but I do like how you can talk about things having agency and things that get away from us, and sort of like a technological process begins to start impacting itself. 

[Sarah]
Mm-hmm. 

[Justin]
Um, which I think is really important when you're talking about AI, because that's a lot of what it is doing, is sort of feeding back on itself, particularly because, um, it's, it's kind of designed to do it. 

[Sarah]
Yeah. You know what? I actually do have one more thing to say about that. [laughs] Because multiple times today, in at least two different situations, people were framing AI as something that we interact with in a way that is different than anything we've interacted with before. And sure, maybe in some sense that's true. But they were trying to suggest that generative AI is the first time technology is an active participant in doing- 

[Kay]
Hmm 

[Sarah]
... things like information seeking, which to me is flat out wrong and false, right? I mean, we were using Google for two decades before Safiya Noble's landmark book, Algorithms of Oppression, came out and reminded most of us, 'cause of course there's always been the minority of people who have been pointing out these injustices for a long time, but she reminded the majority of us that this tool that we had been buying into for two decades was deeply racist, deeply sexist, and it wasn't even hiding it. It was so easy and plain to see, and yet it took, again, almost 20 years for us to really reckon with this. And in that way, the system was actively shaping the information we have access to, whether it's a ranking algorithm, whether it's, you know, whatever type of algorithm where you wanna throw in there, it is actively shaping our experience. So that's one way the way we talk about technology is so vital, because it really oversimplifies the situation we were in before this, and it's always been complicated. And part of the problem is that it's, it's easier when things are complicated to try to simplify things, but then we miss the nuance, and then we find ourselves having this conversation we could have had 20 years ago when Google came out, and even before that, when the internet came out. Um, so anyway, that made me angry earlier today. [laughs] 

[Justin]
Especially when you're talking about, like, algorithms, it... there's, there's a point in which, 

[Justin]
sticking with the theme of agency, you are ceding your agency to something. 

[Sarah]
Yeah. 

[Justin]
So you're saying, like, I... You know, I have, um, a friend who makes money, um, doing, doing... Yeah, I know, right? 

[Sarah]
[laughs] 

[Justin]
Doing webcomics. And so she has to constantly think about, "Can I post it on this platform? Will it move? Will it get... Like, where do I post, and what do I write about?" 

[Sarah]
Mm-hmm. 

[Justin]
Like, "What do I draw? Like, I can't draw sexually explicit things and have it go on Instagram. I would have to censor it in certain ways. Or I could put it on Blue Sky, but it's not gonna move, or I could put it on Twitter and it's not gonna..." You know. 

[Sarah]
Mm-hmm. 

[Justin]
So it... You know, she's always talking to me about just, like, the day-to-day struggle of that, and you constantly see, like, how do you censor yourself, and how do you, you know, change your language in order to not be, uh, deranked on your- 

[Sarah]
Mm 

[Justin]
... especially if your livelihood is, is based around it. Um, and so when we're working with, like, AI, like, you have, like, a black box algorithm that you don't really understand how it works. How much are you ceding to it, and how can we be more conscious of, like, when we're ceding even, even not to AI, but, like, your discovery layer? Like, how much-- how often are we ceding our agency to these technologies that we might not understand how they work or don't have the time to understand or because these are proprietary systems? 

[Kay]
I think especially in a public context, we feel like we have no other choice. Like, it's-- and it sucks. And I think at least going back to fear, I feel like there's, especially when it comes to public libraries, public sector work, um, I feel like a lot of the choice made about what is purchased and not purchased or, um, what's gonna make the library look good or not look good is really dependent on whether or not it will jeopardize the library's stand in the community, um, or, like, if it will-- not even-- it's-- 'cause it's not even really, to me, about disrupting access. It's more about, like, whether the library will be viewed as sustainable as an institution within the community. Um, and that's from my own experience. Um, so I think, like-- [sighs] Yeah. Sorry, what was the question again? [laughs] 

[Justin]
How do we, like- 

[Kay]
[laughs] 

[Justin]
[sighs] It's-- 

[Justin]
how can we be m- be more conscious about when we're ceding our agency to, uh, algorithmic systems? Because we're constantly bombarded with them in a way that I think we forget about. 

[Kay]
Yeah. 

[Justin]
We forget that, like, the discovery system has a certain algorithmic way it approaches us. The way we get book recommendations has a p- specific algorithmic way that it's approaching. So, like, there's a certain point where I just have to consciously think about de-algorithmizing- 

[Kay]
Mm-hmm [laughs] 

[Justin]
... my day of, like, how do I get information in a way that's not just been presented to me, but in, that I actively went out and searched for it. 

[Kay]
Yeah. Yeah. 

[Justin]
And so I feel like there's a lot of stuff in our day-to-day practice as librarians where we have to start thinking about, like, am I buying this book because something recommended it to me, and what was it? Was it my idea, or was it- 

[Kay]
Mm-hmm 

[Justin]
... a convenient idea that came to me? Was the way that I'm teaching this technology convenient, or is it the right way to teach it? I was at a presentation today where, um, they were talking about building static websites instead of dynamic ones for web preservation, right? And I was like, "Is there an easier way to do this where you could have, like, a headless CMS that would just generate the static sites, and you wouldn't have to teach people how a static site is built because it's harder to build?" 

[Kay]
Mm-hmm. 

[Justin]
Um, and they were saying, "It's kinda more important to teach them why it's important, even if, even if it's more difficult to get this done." Like, when you're locked into certain technological workflows, you're kind of losing sight of why you're doing it the way you're doing it in a way that doesn't really work long term. So I'm trying to think about that in terms of bringing it back to, like, algorithms. Like, what am I doing day to day that's just me being told what to do or suggested or, or nudged in different directions? 

[Kay]
Mm-hmm. 

[Justin]
And when am I just, like, sitting down and consciously thinking? 

[Kay]
Mm-hmm. 

[Emily]
Yeah. I have an activity that I have done in my one-shot info lit sessions with first-year seminars, where first part of class we're doing just, like, evaluating sources. Some of them have a TikTok. Some of them have, like, a journal article, that sort of thing. But the next part of class I, I, um, AirPlay my iPad to present, and we go onto the library's Instagram, and we just go scroll, and I ask them to look at, "Hey, who do you think Instagram thinks the library is based on the ads that we're getting?" 

[Kay]
Mm-hmm. 

[Emily]
We've got, like, AARP, um- 

[Kay]
[laughs] 

[Emily]
... yarn. [laughs] 

[Emily]
Yeah, my coworker Tina's in the audience. [laughs] Um, perfume. So, like, it clearly thinks- 

[Kay]
Mm 

[Emily]
... the library Instagram is female, and why? Just trying to get them thinking, like, oh, what does my Instagram advertise to me? 

[Kay]
Mm-hmm. 

[Emily]
Who does Instagram think I am? And trying to get them to think about their own data in that way. 

[Kay]
Mm-hmm. 

[Sarah]
And even just regular tech use, right? I teach undergrads, and so it's always a challenge getting them to, like, look at me and be present. 

[Emily]
[laughs] 

[Sarah]
And on the first day of class, I tell them, you know, we try to limit technology in this class as much as possible for the purposes of being present. But then I also tell them, like, I, you know, I see them on their email, and I see them working during lecture, and I'm like, "You know, you guys, we've all been trained to be checking our email constantly, to be responding to every notification. A third of you have little watches on your wrist that buzz every time you get a message. Like, we have all been trained to be addicted to our technology." It's so easy to blame the students for those behaviors, but i- in many ways, obviously, as adults, they have to learn to take accountability for it, but they are baby adults, and they have been socialized into being this way. And so I frame it through the lens of agency. I'm like, "Guys, take control over your technology usage. Like, you really can't get through this hour and 20 minute class," which even for me is a struggle, and I'm not the one teaching it? Um, then that says something about the ways we have relinquished our agency to our devices. Um, and honestly- 

[Kay]
Yeah 

[Sarah]
... like, I like to think it works at least for a little while [laughs] um, maybe the first couple of weeks. But, I mean, it, it's a much- 

[Kay]
Yeah 

[Sarah]
... more empowering way to talk about our technology use than, like, "You're bad for doing this. You're distracted. You can't focus," than recognizing that, like, we have all been trained by the tools just as much as the tools have been trained by humans. Um, and so acknowledging thou- those conditions, again, the conditions in which our agency is happening, helps us sort of think about what we could do differently. 

[Kay]
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think, like, f- when I work with patrons, like, with computer help, and they can't get into their Google email, and they don't understand why they can't get their password back, like, and I have to be like, "Yeah, Google hates you. Google kinda wants you to die." Like, this is not, like- 

[Emily]
[laughs] 

[Sarah]
Yeah 

[Kay]
... they, they don't want you to access your email. Like, they, like, like, so it's, like- 

[Sarah]
Yeah 

[Kay]
... it's really, like- It, it helps you to also, like, like make a connection with a patron and be like, "We are here together doing this. I am not separate from you." 

[Sarah]
[laughs] 

[Kay]
Like, we are in this together. Um, big tech does not want us to live. [laughs] 

[Sarah]
[laughs] 

[Kay]
It's my hot take. 

[Sarah]
Yeah. 

[Kay]
Um, or one of my hot takes. Like- 

[Sarah]
Yeah 

[Kay]
... they just, um, they pr- they make it difficult on purpose. And- 

[Sarah]
Yeah 

[Kay]
... um, I think it, it can be easy for us to, to think, like, in certain ways. Like, talking, like earlier, about just, like agency, I'm thinking a lot about just, like the ways that big tech, like, does know these things, that we're kind of having these conversations about, like what we sort of, um, frame our technology use to be. Um, and they are sort of, like, kind of finding ways to re-engage with that, um, through like social media apps. I mean, like they keep us on these applications, like, just to continuously, um, produce engagement, so that way they can sort of keep things monetized. I mean, this is why, like, Twitter is obviously... Many reasons why it's a problem, but like, particularly why, like, these things, like, benefit people like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, um, like directly. Um, so obviously, like for political reasons, we can sort of be like, "Yeah, like screw this. I'm done with this." But I think, like it is difficult, and they've made it that way on purpose. But does it make that easier also to like totally separate yourself from it either? Um, so I think, yeah, it's, it's good to have... We can obviously keep having these conversations, like in ourselves as well, but I think when we work with patrons, like having that one-to-one interaction that is like, "No, like, this is not a, this is not a conspiracy." [laughs] Like, this is like literally what's happening. Like, they just don't want you to get in back to your email. 

[Sarah]
Mm-hmm. [laughs] 

[Justin]
Mm-hmm. Uh, yeah, I think something that helped me think about this more was, like removing notifications on my phone. Like, turning off as many notifications as possible. 

[Sarah]
Yes, that changed my life. [laughs] 

[Justin]
Because it was like, you know, it's catching my attention, and I have ADD. I can't be living like this. Like, this is a bad- 

[Kay]
Right 

[Justin]
... idea. Like, I can't walk from one room to another and remember what I was doing. I can't have my phone buzzing at me. But that helped me think about, like what else am I offloading in terms of, like removing the algorithmic, like offloading of my thinking. And of course, like offloading your thinking to AI, like people who can't write an email anymore- 

[Sarah]
Mm-hmm 

[Justin]
... or can't write their own notes. Like, you know, your notes are the thing that you're supposed to be. Like, I can understand. I, you w- you shouldn't do it 'cause it'll suck, but I can understand turning your notes into something that's a final product, right? But like offloading your own notes, like turning on voice mode with ChatGPT so you can just talk to it all day, like that sort of offloading of the way you're thinking is just so... It's so much giving yourself over to an algorithmic feedback loop of like, it's just going to then suggest the next thing I should think. 

[Sarah]
Mm-hmm. 

[Justin]
Rather than having like quiet time, like, you know, taking up something like crochet where you're not... Or making zines, or- 

[Kay]
Read a book. 

[Justin]
Yeah, read a book. I'm becoming a read a book guy. I, I, I didn't think this- 

[Kay]
No, literally. 

[Sarah]
[laughs] 

[Kay]
Screaming about reading a book every day. 

[Justin]
I didn't think this was the direction the show was going in. Like, you know- 

[Kay]
[laughs] 

[Sarah]
[laughs] 

[Justin]
... 'cause we were always like, oh- 

[Kay]
The Library Punk Podcast is now saying reading a book? [laughs] 

[Justin]
And now it, now it's just like read a book podcast. [laughs] 

[Sarah]
[laughs] Yeah. 

[Kay]
Yeah. 

[Sarah]
And like literally touch grass. [laughs] 

[Justin]
[laughs] No, for real. 

[Sarah]
I did that with my students this semester. We had classes, and I, I was very grateful for these professors. I literally brought down a cart of books, and we were like, "Pick one. Read. That's it for an hour." 

[Justin]
Scandalous. 

[Sarah]
And they were like... And we kinda debriefed after. They were like, "That was hard." And I'm like, "Yeah, I'm sure it was." 

[Kay]
[laughs] 

[Sarah]
It was hard for me too- 

[Kay]
Mm-hmm 

[Sarah]
... 'cause I read with them. I can't very well tell you to do it without doing it myself. 

[Kay]
Mm-hmm. 

[Sarah]
So yeah, read a book podcast. [laughs] 

[Justin]
It, it is the read a book podcast, like honestly. 

[Kay]
Yeah. 

[Justin]
Um- 

[Sarah]
Yeah 

[Justin]
... all those tote bags were right. Reading a book is punk. 

[Sarah]
[laughs] Yeah. 

[Kay]
Yeah. 

[Sarah]
But, but on that spirit of, you know, um, that cognitive offloading, like, again, w- w- you know, working with my undergrads, trying to negotiate with them, like why maybe in this class we can just one time write papers ourselves. Um, like again, giving them some credit to be like, you know, we all cognitively offload in different ways, whether we're using generative AI. You know, I use Zotero, which is some degree- 

[Kay]
Yes 

[Sarah]
... of cognitive offloading, even though I love it. 

[Kay]
Ooh, love Zotero. 

[Sarah]
Um, using an online catalog is a cognitive offloading compared to scrolling through a card catalog, right? Like, we always do this with technology. It... We shouldn't be like necessarily shaming ourselves as individuals for wanting to cognitively offload. But again, when it comes to agency, like having intentionality about when, and how, and with what we do that cognitive offloading is very important. And again, like especially for all of us, but especially these young people who are growing up with so much noise just constantly, like giving them that permission to be like, "It's okay. You don't have to try 100% at 100% of the things you do. But if you are gonna do that offloading, like let's make sure it's something that is, is serving us." And, you know, it's kinda like moderation. Like yes, eat candy. I love candy. But if I eat it for every meal every day, like my teeth are gonna rot. [laughs] 

[Kay]
Yeah. Or it's also in the vein of cognitive offloading, it's important to think about why you are trying to cognitively offload something. 

[Sarah]
Yeah. 

[Kay]
Are you trying to do it so you can work more? Boo, no, don't do that. 

[Sarah]
Mm-mm. 

[Kay]
Are you trying to do it- 

[Justin]
Boo 

[Kay]
... so you can go learn how to crochet or go like meet with a friend? 

[Sarah]
Yes. 

[Kay]
Yes. Um, and I'm... Please don't take that to mean yes, use AI to do those things. 

[Sarah]
[laughs] 

[Kay]
That's not what I mean. 

[Justin]
Yeah. 

[Kay]
Um, 

[Kay]
but like, are you trying to just work more and serve capitalism by offloading these things, basically? 

[Sarah]
How long did it take for us to say capitalism in this conversation? 

[Kay]
[laughs] 

[Justin]
I was gonna say- 

[Sarah]
Too long. We should look that up. 

[Kay]
You did early then. [laughs] 

[Sarah]
That's crazy. 

[Justin]
It's implied. Um- 

[Sarah]
I said fascism pretty early though, so. 

[Kay]
Yeah, no, fair. Fair, fair. 

[Justin]
I think we've reached a point in the conversation where we can start to answer the question of why did ALA not allow this panel? Like, why did ALA not want to do this talk? Um, and the question is sort of, is there a reason librarians are becoming more like technological determinists? Meaning that like we are going to have to deal with this and it's out of our control where there's no room for refusal, there's no room for agency. Are they ... Are we becoming more like that or is it because we're simply ceding the political fight? We're offloading the political fight- 

[Kay]
Mm 

[Justin]
... and adopting that rhetoric, you know, we can information literacy our way out of this. Um, we're, we're adopting that rhetoric as the most convenient way to get through the day and, and keep your career going 'cause like, you know, the next question is like, uh, you know, limits on what can we say, like the job market. I know people whose- 

[Kay]
Mm-hmm 

[Justin]
... job search has been impacted by being vocally anti-AI under their full legal name. Um- 

[Kay]
Oops. 

[Justin]
Yeah. [laughs] 

[Kay]
Yeah. 

[Justin]
Yeah, I don't know why you guys put your full name on this thing. I only ever come on my first. [laughs] 

[Kay]
[laughs] 

[Questioner 5]
Yeah, me with an interview next week. Oops. 

[Justin]
Yeah. Well, you know what? Uh, take ... Again, for the panel, why? 

[Kay]
Mm-hmm. 

[Questioner 5]
Yeah. 

[Justin]
I mean, ja- that's what a job interview's for- 

[Kay]
Mm-hmm 

[Justin]
... I think. It's what I do. 

[Kay]
I feel like, um, 

[Kay]
there's a lot of reasons I think, um, a place like ALA would not want these conversations. I mean, there was Amazon in the exhibit hall. 

[Questioner 5]
Yeah. 

[Kay]
Like they're, they're not interested in hearing what we have to say [laughs] which is fuck Amazon, right? Like- 

[Questioner 5]
Yeah 

[Kay]
... so it's difficult I think also like ... 'Cause it is ... In one of those spaces it's also like I, I don't wanna hear from, from boosters about like why I'm wrong 'cause I'm not wrong, right? Like but it's ... I think that there is also just this like learned helplessness that has happened like I think throughout librarianship where we ... Like the field sort of thinks like, "Well, we have no resources and like people don't really know what we do and like so we just like let's not even try." And it's just like that's confusing to me like as somebody who's like earlier in my career like I, I don't ... Like our, our political moment and our social moment like is we cannot afford that b- like attitude at all. Like and we really haven't been in a li- es- especially since, I mean, forever but especially since the mid-20th century, like it is ... And th- the active defunding of institutions and like people just like ... It becomes a sort of attitude where like, "Oh, well, we're just helpless and we can't do anything," and then therefore that sort of becomes like a slippery slope, um, on top of just like, you know, just the racism within the fields like making it impossible for people who have opinions that are different from white supremacists to come in and be like, "Okay, let's do something differently." Like there are active structural forces that are making it difficult for this to happen. So part of me is not surprised that we weren't welcomed into the space because do I want to be welcomed in that kind of space sometimes? Like I don't think so, not all the time. But I do think that there are obviously opportunities for us to do consciousness raising as well. So it's a double-edged sword. I think we should lie more to get into these rooms and we should be mean more [laughs] to people, um, openly. Yeah. 

[Questioner 5]
Yeah. I mean even to get into a PhD program I really played up my interest in data science and computer programming even though I did- 

[Justin]
Yes 

[Questioner 5]
... none of that [laughs] once I got there. Um, but, um, um ... Oh, wait. What was I gonna say before that? [laughs] Damn. I don't know. It slipped my mind. 

[Kay]
It'll come back. 

[Questioner 5]
Yeah. 

[Justin]
I mean th- this is something I talk about a lot which I, I can't claim credit for the idea but someone called it anarchist calisthenics which is every day you should sort of like practice- 

[Questioner 5]
Oh 

[Justin]
... you know, like lying to a cop or, um- 

[Questioner 5]
[laughs] 

[Kay]
[laughs] 

[Justin]
Yeah. 

[Questioner 5]
Like let's clap for that like for real. Yeah. 

[Justin]
Yeah. No. 

[Questioner 5]
Really. 

[Justin]
There has to be certain things that in, in your day you actively are a little bit of a pain in the ass. Um- 

[Questioner 5]
Mm-hmm 

[Justin]
... and otherwi- because it is like a ... It's a muscle. It is, it is a, a muscle you have to like if you feed your anger you'll become an angrier person. 

[Questioner 5]
Yeah. 

[Justin]
And if you feed the sort of like spirit of rebelliousness in yourself you have to like you have to have these things. 

[Questioner 5]
Librarianship is such a people-pleasing, uh, profession as well and I feel like we're trained to do that so we have to- 

[Kay]
Mm 

[Questioner 5]
... be a pain in the ass. 

[Kay]
Yeah. Yeah. I remembered what I was gonna say. Um, and like read the conference, I mean, for the first thing is to follow the money, right? I mean just look at the exhibit hall. [laughs] 

[Justin]
Nightmare. 

[Kay]
And you can see where the money's come from, right? They literally base the signs it looks like based off of, um, you know, how much they're paying to be here so ... But you know someone did say something interesting. I can't believe it ... I can't remember if it was, um, I think it was Rachel Maddow who made a point yesterday about which, you know, cool. Um, about, you know, just keeping in mind how much money these companies are paying to be in front of the eyes of librarians and I don't know potentially that, that technological determinism that you're saying this idea that like the technology it's here, it's not going anywhere, it's just gonna keep getting quote unquote better, um, and we better learn it, use it, embrace it otherwise you might as well leave the job 'cause you're not gonna be relevant. Um, you know that, that's a story that we have to believe in order for those vendors to have a place here, [laughs] right? And to be like, you know, to, to even buy into their sales pitch you almost have to buy into that premise so that's my first answer and, you know, I've had some interesting experience too. You know you, you started this-

[Sarah]
Uh, podcast off, uh, talking about discourse, which I wasn't sure we would do. But I get interesting, um, responses sometimes when I try to talk about discourse, and I appreciate you guys who are, like, practicing librarians in the field doing that work 'cause I'm almost told that, like, um... Sorry, I'm afraid. I'm a loud talker. Um, um, I often get confronted with this idea that, like, oh, librarians don't need to know that stuff. They don't need to know the theoretical knowledge. They don't need to think deeply in that way. They need to know the practical, how do I do this, and that's it. And that's an interesting tension I'm navigating. 'Cause again, I'm not a practicing librarian anymore. 

[Emily]
Mm-hmm. 

[Sarah]
And so that's why I appreciate working with people like you who are, A, demonstrating not only is it possible, but also, like, librarians have the knowledge, expertise, skills, everything they already need to be engaging in that more, like, discourse-oriented type work. It's just about, again, these messages saying, "Don't do that," or, "Do do that," or, like, who gets the privilege to ask those type of deeper questions. Um, often- 

[Emily]
Right 

[Sarah]
... it's in those more ma- masculinized spaces, which research- 

[Emily]
Mm-hmm 

[Sarah]
... absolutely is. 

[Emily]
Mm-hmm. 

[Sarah]
So, um, so yeah. Um, so that's... I love speaking with you all about, like, bridging those gaps between, like, those more abstract conversations 'cause that's, like, what gives our life meaning, right? That's, like, what shapes our existence, and I think we all deserve the time to think about those questions. But of course, I mean, you both can speak to the, the, maybe the challenges of having the time to do that in your, your actual lives. 

[Emily]
Yeah. 

[Kay]
Yeah. I feel like it's something that it kind of feels like a curse that [laughs] like, to do... Not in this work as that it's bad at all. It's just more that, like, I feel like I'm compelled to do this. 

[Emily]
Yeah. 

[Kay]
Um, and it's because of just also, like, my education before librarianship was in media studies, and I was shocked coming into librarianship being like, "None of you talk about this like this? Like, this is crazy." Like, um, and it's so... Like, obviously practice is important for folks who, like, need information in the moment, who have conditions that are really, uh, like, just dire or just, like, like, there's no money, no resources, and they just don't know what else to do, and they need to be able to have community in that way. There is absolutely, like, room for that. However, theory is just as important as praxis. We cannot keep acting like this is just, like, two separate things entirely. Um, it is detrimental to us as a discipline and as a f- a field of work. Like, and also, to me, I think, like, this, like... It feels like it's a, a, a desire to, like, de-intellectualize what we're doing. Like, it feels like- 

[Emily]
Yeah 

[Kay]
... they're trying to make us feel like we can't be intelligent people or smart people or y- whatever you wanna think about intelligence. But it just, like, the... It, it's, it... Maybe not intelligence, but more just, like, disempowering of us, um- 

[Emily]
Yeah 

[Kay]
... from our agency. It, it feels like a, a strategic... It feels like a psyop to me [laughs] almost, like, um, when people are like, "Oh, theory," like, "Whatever." I'm like, "Don't you guys, like, give access to journal articles? Like, that's crazy. Like, they're right there. Read them." 

[Emily]
Mm-hmm. There... I was-- That also made me think about, like, at my institution, there are certainly teaching faculty who think librarians should not be faculty, and that is a struggle we come up against all the time. I've had people tell me I shouldn't be on faculty senate even though there's a library seat specifically for us, um- 

[Kay]
I'll beat them up. 

[Emily]
[laughs] Thank you. 

[Sarah]
[laughs] 

[Emily]
I appreciate it. Um, but just always trying to feel like I have to prove myself almost in these spaces, prove myself knowing theory. Um, I also wanted to mention with theory, I did a data storytelling webinar the other, like, I don't know, a couple months ago, and the fact that I brought up the rhetorical triangle, people were, like, floored by that. And I was like, "I'm a writing major from undergrad." I was like, "Y'all didn't learn that? That's, like, basic, like, communication." 

[Kay]
Could you tell the class what that is? 

[Emily]
Yeah. Rhetorical triangle. So just thinking about, um, your audience, your message, and the speaker, which is usually you, sometimes it's not, and how that shape, all those things shape each other. 

[Sarah]
Mm-hmm. Yeah. And you know, on that note, I've been reflecting a lot during this conference, since I'm not technically a librarian anymore, on just, like, who's my audience? Who am I here to impact? And a lot of times I, I think about librarians as my audience, but really you all are more my, my co-conspirators, and increasingly my audience is non-librarians and trying to draw attention to librarians and librarianship and what's happening here. Because even some of my friends who work at the intersections of, like, social work and librarianship, like, other disciplines are not talking about libraries- 

[Kay]
Yes 

[Sarah]
... in the ways they need to be, and for a long, long time, even since the dawn of the internet, like, excluding libraries from this larger conversation about information, technology, and data. And so yeah, it's making me- 

[Emily]
Yeah 

[Sarah]
... me realize increasingly that, like, this, this, this message, um, again, trying to avoid this, like, vocational ah thing, because of course librarians are not perfect and we have plenty to learn. But, like, trying to at least bring attention to the work that's being done, the expertise that's being done. 'Cause when I talk- 

[Emily]
Yeah 

[Sarah]
... with public librarians, like, half their job is just telling people what the library does and why they, they matter. 

[Emily]
Yeah. 

[Sarah]
And so how can we expect people to invite us to the table when they don't even know that we would have something to offer? 

[Emily]
Yeah. Or the... There's, like, a huge difference between somebody who has a PhD, who is a teaching faculty teaching s- students to research how they learned how to research versus me coming at those students knowing they mean... They're coming f- right from the beginning. They don't know what a catalog is. They don't know what I mean when I say journal article or a monograph. Like, what professor's asking you to do a m- find a monograph and then not explain it to you? Or, like, with public librarianship- 

[Sarah]
Yeah 

[Emily]
... I, I was a page for a while there, and, uh, just having to walk it back to the very basics of technology- 

[Sarah]
Mm-hmm 

[Emily]
... and like, "Oh, it's coming as a text on your phone." And in the library I worked at, it was, like, a concrete box, so there was no signal in the library, so they had to walk out, get the code, come back in. It was awful.

[Kay]
[laughs] Um, but just thinking in those ways, like that expertise in being able to think about where your student, your patron is coming from. 

[Justin]
Yeah. I, um, it is interesting because I don't know how many people read 404 Media, but I highly recommend it- 

[Kay]
Love them 

[Justin]
... um, because they're- 

[Kay]
I was coming up for 404 Media. 

[Justin]
Yeah. 

[Kay]
So, woo. 

[Kay]
[clapping] [laughs] 

[Justin]
I really hope that all picks up. These are really good mics. Uh, I... W- Last year when we recorded, I'm like, "I'm shocked any of that was usable," and it came out amazing. [laughs] 

[Kay]
[laughs] 

[Justin]
Um, 

[Justin]
yeah, they have a whole library section, and they're like a tech, um, uh, newspaper journalism outlet. And they also have like a science section, but I think it's really interesting how much they're focused on libraries as like an area of talking about tech. Um, they have librarians who like write for them. They have people who talk about like issues that we talk about all the time, like on the show together, like online. Um, so I think it's really interesting that there are, there is this like shutting out of libraries as a space that probably goes back to like I wrote down like Paul Otlet, and like computer science itself, kind of like there's this whole way of organizing information. Let's do something completely different and, and come up with like a parallel structure of talking about information, um, through computer science instead of information science. But anyway, um, that's, that's probably another discussion separately. But I think now we can get into like refusal, right? Which is like a concept people talk about a lot, like AI refusal. How are we refusing things? Um, Sarah, you mentioned earlier, like there is... Siri, I am not fucking talking to you. 

[Kay]
[laughs] 

[Justin]
Stop. 

[Kay]
You're listening. 

[Justin]
Stop it. Get out. 

[Kay]
Get the fuck out of here, Siri. 

[Speaker 6]
[laughs] 

[Justin]
Uh. 

[Kay]
Sending a notification out to authorities. [laughs] 

[Justin]
It's contacting Jeff Bezos. 

[Kay]
[laughs] 

[Justin]
Or, or Paul Apple, whoever runs Apple now. I don't know. 

[Kay]
Paul Apple. [laughs] 

[Justin]
Um, but there's like a limit on what... Like, there's, there's a limit of our discourses because fear is closing out our futures, right? It closes out how we talk about the future, how we imagine the future, and we start talking about AI more like we talk about the weather, as like an unnatural, a unavoidable natural process that's like uncaring. Like technology just happens to us. It's not a thing that's done by people. Um, it's not something that we have any agency in. Um, so I think that's why refusal is such an interesting thing to bring in after the discussion on discourses. So I think this is the part where Kay jumps in, and we talk more about like, uh, you have a section on cruel optimism. 

[Kay]
Yeah. I'm, I'm kinda like marinating on this idea about how institutions... Like there's a... Oh, I wrote some good notes in here. Wait, let me... Sorry. 

[Speaker 6]
[laughs] 

[Kay]
I knew I was gonna totally like blackout during this. Okay. 

[Justin]
No, it's totally fine. Like we cut the silences. 

[Kay]
Not alcoholically, but, um, I, [laughs] I can do that anymore. Um, so I feel like there's this sense of like everyone is so stressed out that we're operating from this sense of deep resignation about what is possible, and, um, everything feels very inflammatory. Um, so cruel optimism is this concept by, uh, the late Lauren Berlant, uh, who said that basically like op- cruel optimism is the thing that, um, binds us to fantasies that when acted on actually block us from the satisfactions that they offer. Um, so very theoretical, but I think like a good example to me feels like having to install Cloudflare on an app, uh, website so like people don't flood the web traffic, but it also ensures that like you can still provide access to the thing on the website. But it is this mechanism that is like securitizing like what is possible to get onto a website. But again, it's this dual thing happening where you have like, um, something that is meant to, quote-unquote, "protect it" as well as like you have to even be able to have the, the structure itself to provide it at all. Um, and so I think the cruel part is that like it is, uh, the, the protection mechanism attacks the structural part that makes it happen. Um, and I think that is something that is actively happening in our like emotional and affective response when we think about refusal. Um, yeah, it, it feels like it's a really awesome idea in terms of just like the p- it provides, puts up the possibilities for people, I think, to think differently, um, which is, which is really cool. But, um, yeah, I don't know what else to say except, yeah. 

[Justin]
Yeah. What's, what is the coping mechanism in this discussion? Like is the coping mechanism like we can information literacy our way out of this? 

[Speaker 6]
Mm-hmm. 

[Justin]
Is that... Like, 'cause it's like a coping mechanism that precludes us from thinking about other futures, right? 

[Kay]
Yeah. 

[Justin]
So the idea is we can't think about the other option because we've got this coping mechanism. We've got this fantasy- 

[Kay]
Mm-hmm 

[Justin]
... that says we can fix it this way, or we can, you know, we can Cloudflare our websites until they're safe forever, and then suddenly Justin can't run a script he made- 

[Kay]
Right 

[Justin]
... to like, you know, scrape a research gate, and then it'd get banned. 

[Kay]
Yeah. 

[Justin]
Um, that was a different time in my life. 

[Speaker 6]
[laughs] 

[Kay]
Yeah. I think it goes back to what we were talking about earlier about just like kind of, uh, when we talk with patrons and students and, um, just being like, "Hey, like it's okay to put do not disturb on your phone. Like that's fine. Like you don't have to check your email." Like, like I think having that conversation is, is a way to, um... It can be to us to cope with what's going on, but also like, um, understanding that it is a mechanism to cope with what's happening currently. Um, so it is, um, yeah, it's sort of a thing that we have to kind of recursively keep doing, um, because of just like the recursiveness of capitalism and sort of its sort of desire to like keep, um, bullying us into submission, or it tries to, I guess. Um, I don't know. [laughs] Um, yeah. So it's, it's hard. I feel like this conversation can get really nihilistic, uh, really quickly, and I, and I wanna be really clear that like w- we want to imagine opportunities and ways of hoping about a better world, um, and that like, yes, like big tech does want to kill us. [laughs] Um, but like we don't have to subscribe to that, like quite literally. Um, and Uh, we, i-it is risky though. Like, um, so I think something that I find really, uh, helpful in these conversations is to just, like, understand, like, our positionality, who can sort of be people that can, like, m- have those interjecting conversations about refusal, um, how can we support other people in those conversations, um, and that understanding that there are risks involved in this, but that the part of the, part of the moving towards a better future is, like, breaking down some of those barriers and helping to, like, build stuff up for other people. 

[Sarah]
Mm-hmm. 

[Emily]
Yeah. Read, um, Imagination: A Manifesto by Ruha Benjamin. 

[Kay]
Yeah. 

[Sarah]
Mm-hmm. 

[Emily]
That's your assignment after today. 

[Sarah]
And, uh, everything she ever wrote basically also. 

[Emily]
Yeah, that too. 

[Sarah]
Um, but this also reminds me of our, our colleague Andrea Baer and her article on feeling rules. 

[Kay]
Yeah. 

[Sarah]
Um, she was also part of that. Um, I don't think the feeling rules article was, but she had a different article as part of that Library Trends issue as well. She's amazing and, um- 

[Kay]
She is 

[Sarah]
... you know, you were just talking about it the other day. Um, that's a great article 'cause she kinda is talking about this idea of, like, what feelings about AI are acceptable to have as librarians, and the ways we sort of receive these messages that certain feelings either aren't okay to have, or they're, you can have 'em, but don't articulate them, at least not in your professional capacity as a librarian. And that makes me think of that too, about those coping mechanisms that do lead to that sort of resigned feeling of like, "Well, I'm just not gonna speak up." Actually, we were just in a webinar, I think you were in it too, on, um, teaching with generative AI or something like that. W- wasn't Library, uh, Freedom Project advertising it? I don't know. But, um- 

[Kay]
[laughs] 

[Sarah]
No, I think it was more of a webinar on, like, hating generative AI. 

[Emily]
Yeah. 

[Kay]
Yeah. 

[Sarah]
A lot of the people were talking about how, you know, they, they've tried to be the voice of reason who advocates for more critical ethical approaches, and they've said it so much that people just stop tuning... like, listening to them, and they've just given up, right? And so it's like that, that in and of itself is a coping mechanism. Um, I don't have words unfortunately for how to deal with that. But, um, yeah. 

[Kay]
Maybe we should try to unionize your library. Like, that's something. 

[Sarah]
I mean- 

[Emily]
Yes 

[Sarah]
... like, absolutely. 

[Kay]
Yeah. 

[Sarah]
Absolutely. And- 

[Kay]
A material pathway to that, yeah. 

[Sarah]
Yeah, and a lot of unions in different sectors have been very successful creating protections for workers around replacement and all of that stuff. 

[Kay]
Yeah. 

[Sarah]
So, um, definitely we have union organizers at the conference, and they're the ones we should be speaking to about this. [laughs] 

[Emily]
Yep. 

[Kay]
Mm-hmm. 

[Justin]
Yeah, I know th- I know that, um, some, uh, public libraries have, like, technological changes clauses in their union contracts that are now being repurposed to talk about, like, AI or, you know, if you have to work with AI, does that count as supervisory work 'cause you are ultimately just supervising a program all day? 

[Kay]
Ooh. 

[Justin]
Um, so you- 

[Kay]
Ooh. 

[Justin]
Wow, what a noise that one just went through the crowd. I think [laughs] everyone go back and make the argument that you are now supervising. [laughs] Uh, and that's not in your job description. 

[Emily]
Everybody take that home with you. 

[Sarah]
Bender and Hannah would say you're babysitting. 

[Justin]
Yeah. 

[Emily]
Yeah. [laughs] 

[Justin]
That is... Yeah. Uh, but it's tr- because it is very similar to, you know, having to walk someone through something all day, and if it's, if this is a separate agent from you, if it has its own agency that is not you, um, if it is, you know, a consultant or a, a part of the uni- uh, of the university or the, the workplace, then how is that not supervisory in some ways? 

[Kay]
Right, 'cause the institution is imagining it that way, right? 

[Justin]
Yeah. 

[Kay]
Yeah. 

[Emily]
Yeah. 

[Justin]
Um- 

[Sarah]
Interesting. 

[Justin]
Yeah, it's, it's interesting. There's, there's old things that are in place, and that's why unionization is so important, because you're building the scaffolding for something that you can use in the future. You don't necessarily know- 

[Kay]
Mm-hmm 

[Justin]
... what it's going to look like then, but you know, you, you know that it's giving you leverage now, right? So that's, that's the, I think always the most important part, is building your leverage now wh- when you know you're going to need it in the future. 

[Sarah]
Mm-hmm. 

[Justin]
Even if you don't exactly know how you're going to use it. Um, yeah, I think we're gonna have to do a whole episode on cruel optimism because it seems like there's a, a, a deep dive there of, like, ontology of just, like, uh, you know, imagining what this future could be, but we can't because we're too busy, again, like, doing our own day-to-day work, right? I think there's a lot of, again, people don't wanna have this political fight because it could have an impact on your job prospects, or it could have an impact on how you're getting along at work. 

[Kay]
Mm-hmm. 

[Justin]
That makes you say, like, "Well, this is the future. This is what's happening." 

[Kay]
Mm-hmm. 

[Justin]
Rather than, "I'm a professional and I have an opinion about this, and I think the opinion is refusal." 

[Kay]
Mm-hmm. 

[Sarah]
Mm-hmm. 

[Justin]
And that there's a really good reason for me to, to make that judgment, and that's what you hired me to do ostensibly as a knowledge worker, uh, you know, as a professional. 

[Kay]
Right. 

[Sarah]
Mm-hmm. 

[Kay]
I think people also get really immediately... Like, if you bring up the idea of refusal, like, or that there's a different option, um, people get really frustrated, and they f- get this weird, like, visceral sense of disgust, um, that I find, like, really appalling that is part of my interest in, uh, Boylan's work in particular of just, like, like which is more like queer affect theory kind of related work that is just interested in, like, that moment of, um, someone taking that information and then being like, "Ew, I don't like that, and therefore that changes my opinion of you," which is kind of what Boylan talks about with feeling rules too. 

[Emily]
Yeah. 

[Kay]
Um, yeah. It's, it is that moment of just, like, immediate, um, distrust and the sort of a change in what's possible, and it's closing people out. And also, people think that we talk about refusal, that means that, like, it is about, like, shaming people in a way that closes them out from access entirely. Um, when that, I think shame is important and we should be, like, punching up to people. We should be, like, talking to vendors and being like, "What the fuck? [laughs] Like, why?" Um, but to, like, our colleagues, and to our w- fellow workers, and to people who are, and our patrons as a matter of fact, like, who come to the library and are like, "I have used ChatGPT to help me, like, write a legal document, and I can't afford a lawyer," like, we need to be able to, um, interject in that conversation and say, like, "I see why you feel like this is helpful, but let me tell you why it's not Um, I think that's really important. And to not ... Because it's, there's no point in making that patron feel bad. Like, there, like literally no point. 

[Sarah]
Yeah. 

[Kay]
Like, the reason why they're coming to you in the first place is because, like, they have needs [laughs] that need to be met. Um, so I think obviously in academic spaces that's a little bit different of a conversation, but in a public library, like, I just get really frustrated when there's this idea about in the librarianship discourse about, like, refusal, um, that people think, like, oh, like, that means that we're just, like, haters, which, like, we are, absolutely. Um, but, like, to the extent that we are, like, doing a disservice to patrons by being disinterested in this technology. Um, and I find that itself to be very disgusting. 

[Sarah]
Mm-hmm. 

[Justin]
Mm-hmm. 

[Sarah]
Yeah, I mean, refusal is very easily simplified, but again, we're talking about theory. It's a theory developed by Audra Simpson, who is a indigenous scholar who was theorizing the ways indigenous people do not ... It's not even that indigenous people resist the state, because they don't accept the rules of the state in the first place, right? 

[Kay]
Mm-hmm. 

[Sarah]
It's this idea that the ideologies, the systems of these systems are not only something we want to resist, but we don't even want to accept the, the, the rules that they have laid out to control the game. And so when I see people try to sort of just cast it off as, "Oh..." A- and again, it's a very gendered response that is often rooted in this idea of- 

[Kay]
Oh, yeah 

[Sarah]
... like we can't have rational thoughts and feelings- 

[Kay]
[laughs] Yep 

[Sarah]
... and that our critiques are motivated by some hysteria, and that we can't have genuine, uh, thoughts and critiques about things. Um, but also, um, I think it's also important to acknowledge that, you know, refusal looks differently for everyone. 

[Justin]
Mm-hmm. 

[Sarah]
This is something we talk about all the time. 

[Justin]
Yeah. 

[Sarah]
It is, of course, dependent on your conditions. I'm gonna use the words conditions a lot. Um, and your proximity to power, whether that's your institution, whether that's, you know, your race, your gender, you know, whatever identity in your context g- brings you closer or further to power. Um, this makes me wanna bring up, you know, research and education in library science. You know, we talk a lot about how librarians are strapped for resources and funding and staff. And academia likes to talk about being that way too, but the fact of the matter [laughs] is, for the most part, those of us who are researchers and who are library educators do have the power to be saying these things. And we need to be holding these institutions accountable. I'm very concerned about the context of library education. I'm very concerned about the trajectory of iSchools, and the ways that many of our leading institutions are not taking a stand on- 

[Kay]
Say that 

[Sarah]
... literally any political issue, let alone the ones dealing with the things in our very wheelhouse. Ugh. This is where I'm like, do I want a job or do I wanna, like, say all of this stuff? But, um- 

[Kay]
[laughs] 

[Sarah]
... I don't know. Um, but yeah, I think we really need to be holding those systems in our field accountable, because we all get our degrees from somewhere. And if those places are really embracing not just AI, but all the ideologies and the possible futures that come with it, I don't know where that's gonna leave us as a field. And so that's kinda where I'm trying to do my work is, like, A, highlighting the important work that the librarians and library faculty are doing within these iSchools that are really moving towards data and AI. Um, but also, like, taking accountability for the, the gap between research and practice is m- the researcher's problem that we need to fix, right? And so, um, I'm trying my best to do that, and I know lots of others are as well. But I mean, yeah, it's a, it's a mission. 

[Justin]
Yeah, I mean, there's ... I have a, I have a note here on, like, theory to practice. Like, there's this reciprocal thing. Like, how has AI affected your practice, your experience at work? And how do those practices, like, inform the theory reciprocally? Like, we have to go out, find the practice. Because we've, we've... I think that's why discourse is so interesting, because people are writing about this in different ways, like sending out a marketing email or sending out a Listserv email. You can start looking at how people are talking about these things. Every single day, you're getting new data points about how someone's talking about something. Someone's on the Alma Listserv saying, like, "This AI thing's not working in this way." You can talk about the way they're talking about it. 

[Sarah]
Mm-hmm. 

[Justin]
Um, so, like, is there anything... I've, I've kinda talked about how it affects, like, my practice. Like, I have to pull away from algorithmic thinking just to make sure that I'm the one thinking the things that I'm thinking. 

[Sarah]
Mm-hmm. 

[Justin]
That I'm not just being suggested things that are just sort of floating in front of my eyes that are getting pushed from notifications in the software that I use all day. 

[Justin]
So are there other things in your practice that have, like, at work that you think is going to reel back into theory? 

[Kay]
I buy a lot of used books. Like, a lot of them. [laughs] Um, I, yeah, that's m- at least in terms of ... I talked about work as a public library worker, but I mean for my own, like, work outside of work, which is the scholarship that I do. Um, yeah, going to a bookstore and just, like, finding used books, um, and not relying necessarily on an online catalog. That is some way that I feel like is actionable for me. But I also live in a great city with many used bookstores that are beautiful and amazing. Um, so I can access those things. And I have... I mean, do I have the money for it? I don't know. Um, but [laughs] but, um, but yeah, I think there's, there's a way to approach it. Um, but like I said, like, I would just reiterate for, like, probably a, a fourth time just that, like, um, patrons are ... We, you and patrons are, the patron are not different- 

[Sarah]
Mm-hmm 

[Kay]
... in the, in the context of, like, 

[Kay]
developing skills and learning together and, uh, underneath the, sort of the, the structural oppression that, that big tech is, is enacting. 

[Sarah]
Yeah, I could talk about, you know, like, hallucinated or confabulated- 

[Kay]
[laughs] 

[Sarah]
Sorry, I did it. 

[Sarah]
Whoop. 

[Kay]
[laughs] 

[Sarah]
Um, hal- uh, citations that are coming into chat where the source straight up doesn't exist. Um, or students in my one-shots that are on ChatGPT while I'm walking around using that to search instead of the catalog I just showed them.

[Emily]
But honestly, like personally, I had a real moment in the Field Museum on Thursday. [laughs] I, I was in the plant exhibit, and some of that stuff probably hasn't been updated since like the '70s. And there's so much hand-painted things and so many like hand-placed letters, and there's so much care put into that exhibit. I was like almost in tears like in front of the like peanut plant just like, [laughs] oh my God, humans are so good. Like we do these things, and we still can, and AI hasn't killed everything. 

[Sarah]
Yes. Yeah, and you know, on that note, for some reason where my mind went is, again, I'm obsessed with discourse, and, you know, in the US and in the West in general, we're a very hyper-individualized society, and our frameworks for thinking about existence, for rights, for law, for policy are through a very individualized perspective. And so, again, I keep hearing discussions about how AI has made things completely different from before, and one of the assumptions I keep hearing is that before your ideas were all your own. You came up with everything on your own, and now the AI can help you with that, as if we're not all products of every interaction, book, thing we've ever consumed, right? Like, and again, this is a big problem in academia. The system is sort of set up to get you to like declare your ownership of an idea. But the fact of the matter is, is that we've always been, like knowledge has always been a cumulative process. Creating a world has always been a cumulative, collaborative process. And so I think, yes, of course, we make individual choices. We have, quote unquote, "individual agency." Um, but thinking about us as more than just individuals, perhaps even as more than just humans, as things that are living in a natural world. Like I could speak to about all the ways AI further separates us from nature and the way discourses around technology separate us from nature. And so yeah, just not relying on those old sort of these assumptions that like everything we do has to be only our own, 'cause nothing we do is ever only our own. Um- 

[Emily]
Mm-hmm. 

[Sarah]
And just, and yeah, just so not only thinking differently about AI in the future, but also rethinking how we talk about the past, um, 'cause it's all, it's not linear, right? It always comes back around. 

[Kay]
Yeah, just, uh, a quick plug for a book, uh, Tanya Sutherland's Resurrect-Resurrecting the Black Body- 

[Sarah]
Mm 

[Kay]
... I think is really important on this, on this topic about, um, going sort of understanding history in the way that, uh, history has constructed it. 

[Sarah]
Mm-hmm. 

[Kay]
Um, and, uh, I really recommend that book a lot. Um, so I was thinking about that, and also there's some buttons on the table that say, "No one wants an AI librarian." I think that's true, and you can have one if you want. 

[Sarah]
Yeah. 

[Kay]
Um, they're up here. Um, yeah. 

[Justin]
So for-- I always try and like do something actionable or ask something about like what do you want the future to look like? And for, for this episode, I decided to do like next steps because, you know, we're at a library conference. We should probably be talking about like things to go do next. Um, I think this was something Sarah might've mentioned in, in one of the articles, but like teaching the history of technological adoption in libraries as a model for how to deal with AI's impact in the field. Was there anything like specific to AI, um, i-in terms of like how we should teach about the technological adoption- 

[Sarah]
Hmm 

[Justin]
... of mati- of, of technological adoption in libraries? 'Cause it's not that long of a history in terms of like what a modern library is. 

[Sarah]
Yeah, I mean, first of all, not separating the technological and the social changes that happened in libraries. Like we tend to treat these as if they're different. Um, but if you, like we are, are fans of science and technology studies, um, you know, the, the sort of implicit assumption in that field is that society and technology are not separate and that treating them as such is kind of where we're at today. Um, so that, that's one thing that comes to my mind. Um, um, I guess I have other things I could say, but I'm gonna l-let you guys speak. [laughs] 

[Kay]
I think that's true, and I-- first, my next step, which is kind of, it's all related I think, but I, I think we should be thinking a, a bit beyond what the, the bounds of a library are. And I wanna have a big caveat here and say that like library workers are asked to do many things with little resources. However, I think there are ways that we can imagine changes structurally that look towards a better world, such as like I'm thinking about environmental humanities a lot and just like how-- is there a possible future in which like the public library is, is a building that has solar panels on it, and that power is redistributed to the community? Like is that, like can we do that? Like that's stuff that I'm just like, we can't just keep acting like these are just siloed places and that like we need to think about redistribution in many senses. Um, but yet that also goes back to like the m-the history of like STS, which is science and technology studies and, you know, history of capitalism and that like all of these things are absolutely connected. And it is pol-politics as well as economic histories. I mean, uh, venture capital in particular is like a huge reason why tech is the way that it is, and all that capital and all that money being pushed towards like companies that are trying to just sort of like have the big flashy idea and with little sustainability in their employment models and in their models for distributing, uh, actual capital itself. So it's venture capital as well as like private equity and just like private equity, uh, to sort of grabbing companies and saying like, "Okay, we're gonna like fix you for five years," and then just like spitting it out, and then it's just sort of like taken apart. Um, so we-- the economic forces at work I think are something that librarianship really needs to contend with. 

[Sarah]
Uh, okay. I think, um, what I wanted to say is, um, uh, I received these words of wisdom from my very first library supervisor. Um, I don't think any of my Gettysburg colleagues are in the room, but, um, her name is Janelle Wertzberger. I wonder if she'll listen to this. Hi, Janelle. Um, but you know, she gave me a really important lesson early on, which was this idea of planting seeds and this idea that you might plant a seed- And never know when it's gonna spring up. And again, this idea of accelerationism and urgency are all, like, facets of white supremacy and fascism. And, uh, there's a lot of pressure, I feel this every single day, of seeing immediate impacts of our work and knowing that we can see the change in the world immediately. And the fact of the matter is, A, it's not individual, and B, that sometimes those seeds we plant aren't going to blossom for another season or two, but that doesn't mean the work we're doing doesn't matter. I think about those people who feel like they're being tuned out, and maybe they are in the moment, but who knows? In a year, that same person might remember one thing that someone said to them one time a year ago, and that could be the difference. So, um, just because it feels like things aren't happening now, that you're not seeing the immediate impact of what you're- of what you're sowing, it, it doesn't mean it's not gonna pop up eventually. It just means we might need to just keep watering it, right? And nurturing it, and coming back to it as much as we can, um, as- as often as we have the energy and the resources to. 

[Justin]
Yeah, I definitely get that a lot in terms of waiting for an opening. I feel like in my day-to-day work, I'm always waiting for an opening to make a point about something I want to change or getting through to a faculty member or getting through to his, uh, administrator. Um, yeah, you don't know when something's gonna come in handy. You don't know when something you put in the union contract is gonna come in handy. You ... But you want it there. And I think also having something ready in your mind for that opportunity helps. One, I think it helps keep me sane in terms of, like, this is ... When I see an opening for a critical AI conversation at work, then I'll know what I'm gonna say or what I want to do, um, in terms of, like, should we strip this out? Should we pull this out of our contract? Should we, uh, negotiate with the vendor and say, like, "We're not going to give you an increase that covers your AI adoption this year." Chronicle of Higher Education tried to increase ... [laughs] 

[Emily]
Oh my God, yeah. 

[Justin]
Hang on. Am I legally allowed to talk about this? 

[Kay]
[laughs] 

[Justin]
Probably. Um. 

[Sarah]
You can always cut it. 

[Justin]
So they- 

[Emily]
We had the same increase, so. 

[Justin]
They tried to give us, like, a 15% increase this year- 

[Emily]
Yeah 

[Justin]
... um, for- for the Times Higher Education or Chronicle of Higher Education, uh, site license. And I said, "Have you read your magazine?" Like ... 

[Kay]
[laughs] 

[Justin]
And they said, "The reason is we're adding counter compliance and we're adding a AI chatbot." It's like, you are a trade publication. You don't need an AI chatbot. [laughs] 

[Emily]
Oh my God. 

[Justin]
Um ... 

[Sarah]
Hm. And that wasn't an option? Like, an option? 

[Justin]
No, it wasn't an optional thing. They're like, "We're implementing it." 

[Emily]
Yeah. 

[Justin]
"It's costing us money." It's like, that's not my fault. 

[Emily]
Yeah. 

[Kay]
[laughs] 

[Justin]
Uh, so again, like- 

[Emily]
And then- then when you cancel it and faculty come to you like, "What the hell?" Be like, [laughs] "They tried to add a AI chatbot." 

[Justin]
I mean, it's very ballsy of them to put counter compliance i- 'cause I'm gonna see how little people are reading it. [laughs] 

[Emily]
Yeah. 

[Justin]
But, uh, so that'll be a conversation for next year's renewal, I guess. 

[Sarah]
Interesting. 

[Justin]
But, um, yeah. I, I ... Having something ready I think is just always very useful. 

[Sarah]
Mm-hmm. 

[Justin]
Um, I think, Kay, what you were mentioning about, like, building, building relationships. Like, if you're in academic libraries, building a relationship more with public libraries to have these conversations about, like, how we're interconnected around these issues. Imagining, like, theoretical conjunctures or conjectures beyond LIS, like with other people. I think it was in the note you wrote. 

[Emily]
Yeah. 

[Justin]
I think it's really useful. I think, like, it's always going to be a better option for us to have these conversations across the different specialties and across- 

[Emily]
Mm-hmm 

[Justin]
... the different types of libraries, like a big university versus a small one versus a community college or, you know, just the type of education that public libraries do. 

[Emily]
Mm-hmm. 

[Kay]
Yeah. I think that is really good point to round out on just by the sheer fact of, like, we wanted to do this recording this weekend on purpose so people- 

[Emily]
Yeah 

[Kay]
... could be here 'cause they were here for ALA. Like, that was important. So I think- 

[Emily]
Mm-hmm 

[Kay]
... it's ... We need to be able to, like, construct the spaces to make it happen, whether it be digital or in person. But, um, but yeah, like, it's not just like we- we talk on ALA Connect or whatever. [laughs] Like, no. 

[Emily]
[laughs] 

[Kay]
Oh, we need other things. Yeah. 

[Justin]
Yeah. We need cold pizza and warm beer. 

[Emily]
Yeah. 

[Sarah]
Yeah. And just the power of being in a room together, like, that itself, I mean, again, I think Rachel Maddow said it yesterday, but like- 

[Justin]
[laughs] 

[Kay]
[laughs] 

[Sarah]
... that in itself is an antidote, right? Like, like, these, these technologies, the ideologies, capitalism. I mean, Marx talked about alienation. We can get into that another time, but, like- 

[Justin]
Mm-hmm 

[Sarah]
... this is all contrived. Like, these technologies are meant to separate us. And just, like, being in a room, even for me after the pandemic, like, I had to practice going to things in person again, and I'm still- 

[Emily]
Yeah 

[Sarah]
... getting used to it. Especially for these younger generations. Again, my students who are 13, 14, even younger, um, when the pandemic happened, like, just relearning to be together and teaching, I think that's something librarians can teach their communities. They serve as models for what it means to be together in physical IRL space. Like, that itself I think is revolutionary. 

[Emily]
One thing I wanted to mention, I- I've been thinking about this as y'all have been talking, is kind of tapping into your inner little kid again and just asking why about everything. 

[Sarah]
Yes. 

[Emily]
[laughs] It's been really useful in some of these spaces. Even if whoever you're asking that to doesn't have an answer right away, that may spark some of their deeper thinking about it, and they'd be like, "Oh, actually, why? I d- never thought about that before." 

[Sarah]
Yes. 

[Justin]
Yeah. Well, thank you all so much for coming here. This has been awesome. I am so happy that we're able to do a live show thanks to Pills and Books. Does anyone have any questions for the panel? 

[Kay]
We have time for questions. 

[Justin]
You can be on the show. 

[Emily]
[laughs] 

[Justin]
Do you wanna, like, come up and, like, use the mic? [laughs] 

[Kay]
If you have your own thoughts- 

[Sarah]
If you have your own thoughts- 

[Kay]
Yeah 

[Sarah]
... and ideas. 

[Justin]
Or I can repeat the question. 

[Kay]
'Cause they're like, "No, you're stupid. You're wrong." [laughs] Just kidding. Hey. I love your shirt. 

[Sarah]
Oh, thanks. [laughs] 

[Emily]
Hm. All right. I'm trying to choose, like, which question do I want to ask? 

[Sarah]
Yes. 

[Questioner 1]
All right. Uh, question one-

[Questioner 1]
One thing I like to do when I'm watching YouTube, there'll be an AI ad that'll pop up, and I block every ad [laughs] that's, that's AI. But one of them came up for, like, Master Class- 

[Kay]
Mm 

[Questioner 1]
... and the lady was talking about how, like, "Oh," like, you know, "You wanna be here for the moment, and you wanna be in these rooms when, you know, AI whatever shaping, you know, the future," you know? And I kinda think, like, "Well, how is me learning how to use ChatGPT or whatever granting me keys to this room that you guys are talking about where there's ... these decisions are going to be happening?" What do you guys think about that sort of, like, rhetoric of the, of the room that we're not in or something? [laughs] I don't even know what that room is. [laughs] 

[Kay]
Yeah, it feels like the ... It goes back to the discussion, I think, about, um, the effective altruism, uh, accelerationism, uh, just, like, the tech industry being like, "There isn't ... There is a magical space, and you will someday be there." And it's like, [laughs] what? Like, where? Um, and that, like, at the, at the expense of, like, the planet, right? Like, and there's also this idea of, like, there are ... There definitely is rhetoric that is just like, "Yeah," like, it's more corporate speak of, like, "Yeah, like, sure, like, someday you'll be in the right room at the right time, and you'll, like, have the right tool, and you'll get that promotion, and you'll get that job," whatever. Like, that is surely one thing, but the other thing that I'm thinking about as well is, like, like ... Oh my God, my brain just peated out. That's crazy. Okay. Um, effective altruism, yeah. The idea that, like, we're gonna just burn up the planet, like, with data centers, um, and then we're gonna get to a point where, like, humanity, only the best people, this sort of eugenicist idea that, like, the best people will colonize Mars, right? And then, like, they'll be the ones to sort of, like, be the, the change that humanity needs or something. And, like, 

[Kay]
there's this, like as Sarah was saying, this, like, disconnect between, like, the Earth and the people, which is, like, wild, but ... So I think it's those two things that are happening at once that, um, those rhetorics play to each other, and depending on who's funding what, like, you'll probably hear more or less of either one, I think. 

[Emily]
I was also thinking they need your data, so they want you in the room to take your data to train on- 

[Kay]
Mm 

[Emily]
... probably. 

[Sarah]
Yeah. I love this question, too. I've had some interesting conversations with librarians. Both happened to be male librarians, so I don't know. I don't know. That's just what happened. But, you know, they both were sort of talking about how they wish other librarians felt more confident to have these sort of hard-hitting questions with vendors and ask them these technical questions, 'cause they have gotten very positive responses from these vendors. They've been taken out to eat. They've been invited to their webinars. So for me- 

[Kay]
[laughs] 

[Sarah]
... you know, the gender element is relevant there because, again, like, who you are, how you present, how you're perceived is going to impact how cordial and welcoming that invitation is. It doesn't feel great to be like, "You can come s- get a seat at this table, but it's gonna be a hostile environment for you." 

[Kay]
Right. 

[Sarah]
"Have fun with that." We should be asking, like, "Can you come to my table for a change?" Like, "Hello. We've got a massive table here at ALA. Like, come on over." 

[Kay]
Yeah. 

[Sarah]
So yeah, like, rejecting the rules of the game, being like, "I don't ... I actually don't even want a seat at your table, 'cause your table is having a conversation that's not even in the reality I'm living in." Like, that doesn't mean we don't go there. Again, like, Emily's doing this amazing work participating in these task force. Again, it depends on your proximity to power, your willingness to weather those hostile circumstances, how much that's gonna, like, impact you, like, in terms of your humanity. But, uh, yeah, we definitely should be asking the question, do I even wanna be at that table in the first place? [laughs] 

[Emily]
Right. 

[Questioner 1]
Clarivate de- definitely didn't invite me to anything. [laughs] 

[Sarah]
Yeah. [laughs] 

[Questioner 1]
I've been asking hard-hitting questions. [laughs] 

[Sarah]
Yeah. 

[Emily]
Right. Right. 

[Sarah]
And some days you're like, "I am ready to be at that table. I'm gonna fight." And other days, you're like, "I'm gonna take a step back." And that's okay, again, as long as we're not, like, again, ceding the fight to the people who are always burdened with that fight, which are always the most marginalized in our community. 

[Kay]
Yeah. 

[Questioner 1]
My second question, as someone who has not started, uh, library school yet, but I'm kinda thinking like, "Oh, gosh. Am I gonna go in there and it's gonna be like, 'Do this research paper. Use AI?'" And I'm like, "Oh, is that gonna be, like, my entire future now, um, no matter which, uh, focus I choose for a master's?" 

[Sarah]
Yeah. 

[Emily]
I was at a panel this morning that, um, emphasized that students have academic freedom, too. 

[Sarah]
Yeah. 

[Emily]
It's not just faculty. So I definitely ... If you're being asked to do that, be like, "Hey, is there an alternative that I can do?" 

[Emily]
Or take it higher, because honestly, admin and higher ed is gonna listen to the student voice more than faculty voices sometimes. So yeah. 

[Sarah]
Uh, yeah, I was just gonna say, you know, it, it really depends on the program, which has always been true. You can sort of tell based on the websites a lot of times [laughs] based on how much libraries and people in society are centered versus other things, again, especially if you're looking at an iSchool. Um, but I, I ... You know, there's a lot of diversity. I've heard everything from professors who are like, "I don't want my students using AI," but they use it anyway. I've also heard from library students who are like, "My professor is making me use AI even though I don't want to." [laughs] So I, I think there's just as much diversity among library faculty as there are amongst library students, and it's an interesting, like, tension point right now. So I don't have answers. At least in my perspective, the librarians are more on the side of, like, we need to think critically and intentionally about this in my context. But again, it, it depends. 

[Kay]
Thank you. 

[Sarah]
Yeah. 

[Kay]
Thank you. 

[Questioner 1]
Thank you. 

[Kay]
I have a question. 

[Questioner 1]
Yeah. Dang. Okay. 

[Sarah]
Whoa. [laughs] 

[Kay]
So I'm Emily's coworker that's responsible for why the AARP ads probably come through on our- 

[Sarah]
[laughs] 

[Kay]
... Instagram. Um-

[Questioner 2]
And I'm, I would say, like mid-career. I'm not close to retirement, so I would say like mid-career. And what I've been excited about hearing is a lot of this is like the extension of conversations that I had when I was in your all's stage of career and this resistance to things. And you can see how that didn't... None of... Like, we resisted, but like did we really? And I really feel like there is a different momentum with the conversation that you guys are now having, and I wanna know if you feel it too, and why you think the momentum towards this resistance and change might actually take hold. 

[Kay]
I have a very selfish response, [laughs] which is I- my paper won an award for talking about AI refusal, and I was like- 

[Questioner 2]
Hell yeah 

[Kay]
 ... what the hell? [laughs] [audience applauds] Um, so it's very cool. So I was like, "Oh," 'cause I surely was like, "They're gonna be like, 'No, ew.'" And it, it was the complete opposite response. So I think people do wanna hear this stuff, um, and I think it, especially in this current like social and political moment, I think things are really... There's a lot of pressure, I think, to, to respond in a different way. So that's my, my very narcissistic response. 

[Justin]
Uh, going back to like the other question too of like I'm a student and I'm worried about having, being forced to use AI, I know that in some of our user groups for students, we were asking them to use natural language search, and they were like, "I don't touch that shit." They, they abso- like it didn't matter it wasn't like a, a, an LLM. They were like, "I don't, I don't do it." Like you said, "Natural language," and they were just like, "Nope, I'm gone. I'm not doing this for you." Even though they were like, these were like students who come back year after year, uh, or like semester after semester to work in our user groups. 

[Questioner 2]
Mm-hmm. 

[Justin]
And they're like, "No, I don't, I don't deal with that stuff. I don't touch it." So it's clearly like got a certain amount of social movement, I think. There's a certain... I think there's a, particularly from what I'm, I hear from administrators, like students all wanna use AI all the time. It's like that's not true. 

[Questioner 2]
No, it's not, especially all those students at their commencement ceremonies when their speakers were talking about AI and they got booed, and I was like, "Yes." One of those was my cousin. I was so proud. 

[Sarah]
[laughs] Oh, yeah. 

[Sarah]
Yeah, it's an interesting question too. Like I also think, I don't know, it's so easy to like talk about generational differences, but I mean, I, I feel it being like an elder Gen Z millennial cusp kinda- 

[Sarah]
Yeah 

[Sarah]
... kinda person. 

[Kay]
Yeah. 

[Sarah]
And I see it in my students, where they're s- both so resigned and accustomed to being surveilled all the time, and yet are also like upset and unhappy with the world. And, um, you know, I think we're all experiencing that to some extent, and then of course there have always been people in our field. Um, there's a really wonderful article by, um, Dr. Nicole Cook and Dr. Vanessa Kizzee on this idea that every while or so we ask ourselves like, "We need a paradigm shift. We need to do something differently. We need an answer. Like, we need to embrace social justice." And they remind us that like this language of we need a new paradigm distracts us from the fact that there have always been people saying these things long before, um, those in power or those in the majority started listening or caring. And so, um, I think it's been brewing for a long time. I think we have hopefully more queer people, more people of color, more working class people coming into the field, and if not, I hope we're at least listening to those people more than we were in the past. So I don't know. It gives me a lot of hope at least when I see my students feeling both despair about the world, but then again when we talk to them through the lens of agency, like helping them gain some of that, that hope and also this belief that they can do something about this world. Again, even if it's a teeny little thing. 

[Questioner 2]
Mm-hmm. 

[Justin]
Anyone else with a question? 

[Questioner 3]
I think there's a question, but there's also some talk back that I've been thinking through listening to the way that this discourse is shaped, I think even in this room. Um, thinking about my main frame of reference for library work, which is one of the lowest income neighborhoods in the state of Pennsylvania, um, where, 

[Sarah]
yes, like I think everybody in our libraries deserve to have these theoretical framework conversations. But I think also, um, there's something to be said for refusal as inaction. 

[Kay]
Mm-hmm. 

[Questioner 3]
Refusal as, uh, disengagement, refusal not as opening a conversation or like enacting a critical discourse, but refusal simple, simply as an act of not having the time to care about the extra task or the extra ask or the extra thing that's being asked through this like new tool that we are supposed to learn. And I wanted to provide a, um, just like a practical example. [laughs] Um, in my workplace recently, we went from having no, no system-wide policy around AI to kind of having a wait and see what the policy will be to having an exclusive vendor relationship, and then what was framed as a mandatory training about how to interact in a, in a very limited way with like this vendor's AI tool. And, um, 

[Questioner 3]
most of us simply don't have time from the like [laughs] the economic and social crisis that we have to work in. We don't have time to do a mandatory training. And in about a week's time, I think the training announcement was reframed as a very strongly encouraged suggestion 

[Questioner 3]
Because no one was doing the mandatory training. [laughs] No one stood up and said... Well, not no one, but very few people that I was talking to stood up and said, like, "I'm going to go and refuse to do this." 

[Kay]
Mm-hmm. 

[Questioner 3]
Because there's no reason to have that conversation when work is so focused on the crisis of, crisis of policing and addiction and- 

[Sarah]
Mm-hmm 

[Questioner 3]
... immigration enforcement and homelessness and all these other factors in our, in our cities, in our environments. So I think, I think it's, it is important for us to, to take time to sit in rooms like these and talk about what i- what are the critical theoretical frameworks that we're applying. But I, I think in terms, like, sheer labor work to rule terms, refusal as being fully unbothered [laughs] is, like, number one tool of, like, that everyone has access to before anything else enters that frame. And I think, um, I think too, just, like, the, the other, the other... Sorry, I, I'm, I'm going on. I had a lot of thoughts. But I think 

[Questioner 3]
f- framing, I think a lot of the difference that I hear in conversations with people who are focused on the research or coming from academic institutions is the idea that our libraries are, like, very closed assemblages where there's a lot of surveillance and all of this is happening, and I... That's not my experience of work. I think the, the projection of that surveillance being a possibility is sort of intimated broadly in our, like, bigger, more diffuse institutions, like multi-branch libraries. And most of the time, the people that would be tasked to do the surveillance are too busy, like, rewiring [laughs] a fucking computer or an outlet in a library somewhere. Like, they're not checking this record. They're not doing this policing that is assumed to be happening. 

[Sarah]
Mm-hmm. 

[Questioner 3]
And I think a lot of what we, like, if we're pushing back on the inevitability discourse, like, a lot of what we can build knowledge around is, like, it's not happening to me right now. And if I behave as though it is, I'm doing it to myself. 

[Sarah]
Yes. 

[Questioner 3]
So that, that's... I don't think there's a question, but, like, I wanted to throw all of that out 'cause I thought it was important to say coming from where I come from. 

[Sarah]
Yes, thank you. 

[Kay]
Yeah, thank you for saying that. Yeah, I think there's a lot of, like... I think there is a 

[Kay]
spectrum of refusal, like, and- 

[Sarah]
Mm-hmm 

[Kay]
... I was thinking about, like, metabolism as a, as an idea. Like, depending on who you are and, like, your job situat- like, your work environment, like, in a very material sense, like, yeah, it just, it may not... It is likely not the first thing on the docket of what you have to do that day, and I think there's... It's great that we have resources. Like, I just wanna also plug Library Freedom Project again, um, and, like, the tip sheets that have been created and, like, things that you can just, like, hand out or print out and you're like, "Cool, I have that. If I need it, I can get to it." But, like, yeah, I think it's every, uh... The part of this, I think the problem of, like, why these conversations, like, are, can be difficult to have, I think, across the, the field is because, like, everyone's context is radically different. 

[Sarah]
Mm-hmm. 

[Kay]
And the funding models are very different and, like, secur- the s- the surveillance of it all is very different. So yeah, I just wanted to say thank you. 

[Sarah]
Yeah. I have, um, I'm doing my dissertation work with a large urban public library system, and this is exactly sort of one of my theses is that this, [laughs] uh, discourse around AI and librarianship treats it with a lot of urgency, and yet most librarians, especially public librarians, especially academic librarians in low-income environments, it is the furthest thing from their first priority, if at on the list at all. Like, when you have people literally overdosing on the steps outside the building, you're not worried about evaluating these AI tools, right? Until your library board is telling you, "Actually, this is the most important thing to you right now." Um, and to me, that, that is extremely harmful, this deep disconnect. And a lot of the research on AI and librarianship right now is coming from either researchers who do not work in libraries or academic librarians, which again, is great. We love academic librarians, but there is a lot missing about the context of public librarians 'cause again, who does... Do public librarians always have the time, you can speak to this better than I can, to be doing this research, and are we in academia taking the time to get out of our silos [laughs] and go talk? I could talk about that all day. Um, but yes, there is a deep cavernous divide between what we're being told is most important to us and what is actually the most important to us. Um, again, what Kay said is true. Like, I've talked to some people who, um, are very frustrated that certain librarians in their organization do not participate in the AI discourses because they just don't really want to, even though patrons are asking about it. That's a very different thing than, like, my patrons aren't asking me about this. This isn't relevant to our work, and so I'm not going in to engage. So yeah, just to- 

[Kay]
Yeah 

[Sarah]
... just refusing the idea that this is even something we should care about at this moment. We kind of have to just 'cause it exists and we have a social responsibility, but absolutely. And, like, I, I'm very interested in, like, library boards and governance systems in cities. I'm also in a city environment that's trying to become a smart city, and the library's being completely excluded from that conversation. Um, yeah. And so that, that too shapes, like, what we think our priorities as a library should be versus the power. So anyway, yes, thank you for saying that, and as much as we can be dispelling this, like, sense of urgency around AI, I mean, the better. 

[Kay]
Mm-hmm. 

[Sarah]
Yeah. And it's not to get... This is, like, different from the type of refusal we're talking about, but the type of refusal you're talking about is one that goes back to the labor movement, which is the most powerful thing we can do collectively is put our hands in our pockets. 

[Sarah]
Yes. 

[Sarah]
Right? But you have to do it collectively, right?

[Justin]
So saying, "I don't have the time," or, "That's not in my contract," or, "I'm on work to rule," is all perfectly good ways of saying like, "I'm not engaging with this." It's a different type of refuse- refusal, but it's one that's, that has its own tradition. 

[Questioner 4]
Yeah. 

[Sarah]
Mm-hmm. 

[Kay]
Yeah. 

[Sarah]
Like 

[Emily]
I think we have some more questions. 

[Justin]
One more? 

[Emily]
I'm okay to take more. 

[Questioner 4]
[laughs] Thank you. Um, I'm just gonna give a little bit, a quick context before my question. So I'm deaf, and I, I've used different transcription apps in the past. And, you know, some of them use AI, and one in particular I used, I thought it was fine, and then at the end of the conversation, it, it generated a summary for me with extremely sensitive content and uploaded it to my computer. And I was like, "Okay, I need to get rid of this immediately. This is not cool." Like, these people ... You know, I can't have this, this information just out there. So anyway, I'm wondering, you know, how do you respond to the idea/push back against the idea of AI as a tool that's going to help disabled and other marginalized communities? 

[Sarah]
Mm. 

[Emily]
Mm. 

[Sarah]
That's like, ugh, it's one of the tragedies of the situation, right? Because if we imagine a tool like AI in a non-fascist, authoritarian, capitalist context, especially in the realm of disability, in medical research, like it's not like ... I don't think any of us would say we hate automation and we think it's inherently evil. No, right? 

[Emily]
Mm-hmm. 

[Sarah]
Automation in- 

[Emily]
No, I'm kidding 

[Sarah]
... in theory, again, if we lived in a neutral world, which is impossible, could be something wonderful. I mean, the one thing I use AI for is I'm a qualitative researcher, and I use that to generate transcripts, 'cause wow, what a time saver. It makes my life so much easier. But I have done so much research to find an AI transcription service that makes me feel like comfortable and like my patrons are being genuinely protected, and like the sensitive things we're talking about are in an ecosystem where I have full control, and it's really difficult. So I, I personally wish we were developing these technologies, and, and smaller companies are, through the lens of like design justice, where we don't design these tools that are meant to be accessible to also be deeply, um, um, like have these deep privacy concerns. So yeah. 

[Emily]
Mm-hmm. 

[Sarah]
It's, it's deeply unfortunate that those aren't the values these systems are being designed around. Um, I'm not as familiar as AI tools developed for, um, disability, but there are a couple of indigenous programmers who have been working on creating, um, language models to preserve indigenous languages. And it's just a really beautiful example of how we can create technologies to do good things, but the very process of who's doing it and how is, is vital. So yes, I, I, I hope we see significant improvements, uh, in the privacy protections around these tools. 'Cause even libraries wanting to offer these types of services, but then when the data isn't safe, it's like how can we do that? 

[Emily]
Mm-hmm. 

[Justin]
Yeah. I mean, there's a million privacy problems, but also like the, the program I use to, to make transcripts for this show is Eleven Labs, which is a pretty horrible company. Like, I would prefer not to use them, but the program I was using before got noticeably worse over the course of a year to the point where we have deaf listeners to this podcast who use the transcripts. And so, like I want the transcripts to be good, so if they're constantly saying the wrong person is talking, like that's not good. So I do have to use these ones. They use like voice cloning, uh, because they're able to detect which speaker is talking better, even though I've tried to use programs that use individual tracks. Like, I record on multiple tracks. Like, there's lots of different ways we try and make the show more accessible, but for s- whatever reason, the way these programs work is they mesh everything together and then plug it into the speech detection, which makes it wrong, which never made any sense to me. So I, I dunno, I'm thinking a lot about like, you know, uh, low vision and blind apps, like things that people would use to read the back of products in the grocery store, and, you know, paying $100 a month for a subscription for something like that. So like when someone says AI is going to solve this problem, I'm like, but you're still going to charge disabled users 10 times as much for something that's specifically useful to their needs. So like- 

[Emily]
Mm-hmm 

[Justin]
... are you really convincing me that this is like doing anyone a favor? And especially when you have like all the privacy concerns separate from that. 

[Emily]
Also, like the sense of doing it as a favor I feel like is part of the problem too. Um, because like at the university everyone was freaking out about Title II, um, stuff, and I was like, I've tried to design like my lib guides and shit with universal design the whole time, so I didn't have that much work to bring everything up to code. But these professors who have done things from the same PowerPoint for like 20 years are like, "Oh my God, I can't use it anymore." [laughs] I'm like, "No, that's not what we're saying. We're saying learn something new." [laughs] 

[Justin]
Yeah. Uh, is there anything really pr- yeah. 

[Kay]
Okay, last question, and you can come talk to us after if you want. 

[Justin]
Yeah, absolutely. 

[Sarah]
Yes. 

[Questioner 4]
Yeah. 

[Questioner 5]
'Cause I'm gonna ask a big question. 

[Sarah]
Ooh. 

[Questioner 5]
Let's say hypothetically you work at a library that's looked up to by every other library in your area. 

[Kay]
Oh, word? Yeah. 

[Questioner 5]
And, and you have the chance to say, "We're not using these tools. We're not integrating a chatbot into our website," what are the effective ways to do that? 

[Kay]
I like to think like at least leadership likes to hear money talk. 

[Sarah]
Mm-hmm. 

[Kay]
So if you're like, "Hey, this is just like literally too expensive for us" I think that is a good way to jump into that conversation. 

[Sarah]
Mm-hmm. 

[Kay]
Um, I don't make decisions about money in my library, but I work at a library that is, has a reputation of being known, uh, in the area. Um, so there is sort of like a desire to set precedence that I think is really-

[Kay]
Uh, emotionally taxing, uh, for the library. So I think if you could say maybe like let's consider this from a mon- money standpoint and maybe like do a community survey and say like, "Do patrons actually want this?" And if they say- 

[Sarah]
Mm-hmm 

[Kay]
... like, and then you kind of go from there. That's my practical advice, but yeah. 

[Sarah]
Yeah. 

[Emily]
Yeah. Um, thinking academia-wise, uh, there's a lot of talk about being student-centered all day every day and framing AI non-use as student-centered. Like we are centering their learning. We want to make sure they walk away from this education with critical thinking skills is one way. The money is also always [laughs] where we, where we come from there too. Um, you have anything? 

[Sarah]
Yeah. What I would add, um, from, um, you know, the library I've been working with, um, the way they're approaching their, their AI policy implementation is really looking at, A, like core library values and their preexisting policies, especially at spec- spec- excuse me, especially around patron privacy. So when they're able to be like, "No, we're not using these tools," like patron privacy is the biggest one, and that, that's been effective because they're policies that have already been voted on and implemented and like brought into practice, so they're able to sort of... Again, it depends on like how much that, that matters and how much authority the policy [laughs] makers and enforcers have. Um, they're actually in the midst of approving the policy, but implementing it is what I, I hope to see what will happen. But, um, that has been how they've gone about sort of refusing certain AI tools and implementations by being like, "Well, we, we have these very clear policies, and these companies cannot answer the questions about how we can use these tools in line with our policies." Um, so I mean, uh, uh, we'll see if that's effective, but that's the strategy they're going with now. 

[Emily]
Mm-hmm. 

[Justin]
Yeah. It's, it's always a thousand small things before you can make a big declarative statement, right? So it's a dozen small conversations. It's a dozen small policies. Uh, and then you build up that, you know, base of, you know, we can't do this for financial reasons. We c- you-- And you don't have to believe all the reasons you give. 

[Emily]
[laughs] 

[Justin]
Um, but I'm thinking about this before- 

[Emily]
Lie if you have to. 

[Justin]
Yeah, exactly. That's one thing we've learned from this episode is lie. Uh [laughing] but no. But like I'm thinking back to like my scholarly communication days, like when they were trying to refuse the Elsevier deal and say like, "We are willing to walk away from the biggest academic publisher in the world," that was a thousand small conversations, um, before you get to make that big declarative statement. So it starts with building up like, do you have a policy? Do you have a good reason? Do you have a second good reason and a third good reason? And, you know, you start with the ones you think people wanna hear the most, but sometimes that's not even the one that they resonate with. You, you get to- 

[Emily]
Mm 

[Justin]
... reason five, and suddenly that's the one that strikes a chord. You're like, "I, I ordered these the wrong way." 

[Emily]
[laughs] 

[Justin]
It happens all the time. Um, but yeah, always like waiting for an opening. So it's, it's a lot of small pieces before you get to say, "We are not doing this." And then you're gonna have to like, you know, explain to the community why, but at that point you've got the buy-in. 

[Emily]
Mm-hmm. 

[Justin]
All right. Thanks so much everyone, and thanks for staying for the questions. 

[Kay]
Thank you. 

[Emily]
Thank you. 

[Emily]
[clapping]