Michael Paulus on Hope in the Library and Responsible AI

Please introduce yourself to our readers.

I lead the university libraries and a number of AI initiatives at Creighton University, a Jesuit research university with campuses in Omaha, Nebraska, and Phoenix, Arizona. Prior to coming to Creighton, I was Dean of the Library, Assistant Provost for Educational Technology, and Associate Professor of Information Studies at Seattle Pacific University in Seattle, Washington.

Before I became a library dean, about fifteen years ago, I worked in archives and special collections—leading that area at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington and, before that, technical services for special collections at Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey.

Throughout my career, which has been significantly shaped by and aligned with digital transformation, I have been interested in how we manage continuity and change in libraries. For the last ten years, my administrative and research interests have focused on the reflective and responsible integration of emerging technologies such as AI into libraries and institutions of higher education.

When I started my first two book projects—AI, Faith, and the Future: An Interdisciplinary Approach and Artificial Intelligence and the Apocalyptic Imagination: Artificial Agency and Human Hope—it was hard to find people who wanted to think about the impact of AI! Now, of course, AI is of broad interest and it is exciting to see many librarians and libraries taking leadership roles on their campuses and in their communities. I hope my latest book, Hope in the Library: How Libraries Can Help Shape Our Future with Artificial Intelligence, helps ground this work and encourage more of it.

Briefly summarize Hope in the Library.

Hope in the Library argues for the importance of libraries in a world being filled with and redesigned for artificial agents. Through a series of essays exploring the library in the past, in imagined futures, and in our digitally-enhanced present, it shows how libraries have enduring roles—as archives sourcing our memory and understanding, as sites inspiring our imagination and hopes, and as structures cultivating our attention and agency—which can help us integrate AI into libraries and society in ways that enable us to thrive in our emerging information environment and create a better future.

Why did you decide to write this book?

When I became a librarian at the beginning of this century, I encountered a lot of replacement narratives: the internet replacing libraries, library schools becoming information schools, digital resources replacing print materials, online services replacing in-person interactions, libraries becoming print-free study-halls, and so forth.

The profession certainly was—as it was before and still is—changing. But it seemed to me that too many, including many in leadership positions, were emphasizing change without enough continuity. Having studied libraries in the ancient world, as well as worked with emerging technologies in my work and research, I wanted to argue for a more balanced approach to change that focused on enduring library roles and values.

Further, as I learned how libraries had managed technological and related social changes throughout history, by developing new human information practices to accompany technological information processes, I began to see the unique role and responsibility librarians have in shaping emerging information technologies. This is especially true with AI.

Why did you decide to present the book as essays?

I hope many will read the whole book, from the beginning through the end, as a sustained argument. My last book was a traditional monograph, but as I was working on this one, I realized that some readers may be more interested in certain parts of it: the history of libraries, speculative library futures, or the digital transformation of libraries in the present.

Some may have even more narrow interests addressed throughout the book, such as the history and future of books, archives, or artificial agency. And then there are specific ideas in the book that I think stand on their own, including my definition of a library, the importance of attention, the value of the apocalyptic imagination, my information, automation, and virtue framework, et cetera.

Is there anything else you would like to share?

AI is transforming the world of work. In Hope in the Library, I point to some things librarians can do to help people prepare for and shape the future of work: providing career resources, vocational discernment, transdisciplinary AI literacies, and orientations to trans-professional AI ethical considerations. Since submitting the manuscript, I have continued to think about how we in libraries are faced with the double challenge of preparing others as well as ourselves to create a desirable future of work with AI.

I believe librarians, with our professional history of—and expertise with—managing the dynamics of technological and social change, have a lot to offer other professions. My current book project, “A PARADIGM for the Future of Work,” addresses this and presents a framework for creating meaningful work with AI.