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The Florida Virtual Campus Library Services website provides information, training, tools, and other resources for library staff at the 28 state colleges and 12 public universities in Florida.

Visitors are invited to learn more about the Library Services unit of the Florida Virtual Campus and the 150+ libraries at our state's 40 public institutions of higher education. A clickable map locates the colleges and universities that we serve and provides links to each institution's library website.
 

 

update from the executive director

Hello Everyone,

Over the past several decades, libraries have nearly always been participants in adopting new and emerging technologies in the information space. I’m obviously thinking of the recent and rapid emergence of Artificial Intelligence, and specifically ChatGPT, which seems to be nearly omnipresent in the news these days. 

 

New technologies, and especially those that emerge and expand rapidly, often cause concern, partly due to the unpredictability of unanticipated consequences. ChatGPT has been something of a “jolt” in the realm of artificial intelligence, as it possesses dramatically increased capabilities compared to previous AI systems, and it also has the capacity to grow and evolve rapidly. I believe that those two factors argue in favor of libraries finding ways to participate in and guide its growth and development. 

 

Way back in 2001, a new information source emerged, notable not so much for its actual content as for its method of creating and updating content, namely crowdsourcing. According to Wikipedia, the first edit to Wikipedia’s database was made on January 14, 2001. I was working in reference and instruction at a university library at that time, and I remember the many discussions among librarians about the problems and challenges created by the emergence of Wikipedia, especially for students doing research. For many years, there was a general consensus among faculty and librarians that Wikipedia should not be used as a source for a scholarly research paper. 

 

Crowdsourcing of information still poses problems and challenges, but after more than two decades, Wikipedia is better accepted and more commonly used as a tool for learning and sourcing information (albeit still with some caveats). Libraries not only adapted to Wikipedia as a new tool for research, but also helped to shape and craft the ways in which Wikipedia grew and developed, especially in finding ways to verify its content. Much of the conversation around ChatGPT these days seems to be about potential problems and challenges, and those issues are both real and disturbing. However, I think there’s tremendous potential for ChatGPT to dramatically improve search and discovery for libraries.

 

Elijah

 

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