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This analysis of chat reference transcripts assesses differences in how librarians and graduate assistants (GAs) incorporate teaching strategies in responding to chat reference inquiries in social sciences, health sciences, humanities, STEM and business/economics at a large, public R1 university in the United States.

Researchers with disciplinary assignments in five different subject domains conducted qualitative analysis of a purposive sample of 982 transcripts of chat interactions during four semesters in 2021 and 2022.

Some form of information literacy instruction (ILI) occurred in 58% of the transcripts, with slightly less teaching occurring in social sciences inquiries than in other subject areas. Of transcripts that included teaching strategies, search procedures predominated, followed by a mix of concepts and procedures, and the least with concepts only. Chat providers taught concepts specific to social sciences, health sciences and humanities, but not to STEM or business.

The study compares transcripts at one institution; findings may be most applicable to large, research institutions that seek to incorporate ILI in online reference services.

Chat reference training should include best practices for ILI relevant to specific subject domains for providers without background in those disciplines and recommendations for referrals to subject specialists.

Existing ILI literature does not address the question of how chat providers teach concepts rooted in a specific subject domain or offer a comparison of teaching strategies employed in different disciplines, by librarians versus GAs or staff.

This study aims to explore the capabilities, limitations and potential of ChatGPT applicable to online reference services in academic libraries.

This study used the method of qualitative content analytics to assess the general capabilities of ChatGPT applicable in academic libraries. Two experienced academic librarians had face-to-face interactions with ChatGPT by asking ten most common questions often asked by faculty and students at the Georgia Southern University Libraries (https://library.georgiasouthern.edu/). To examine the ChatGPT’s applicability and capability, they also compared the ChatGPT with a popular online chat reference tool called LibChat, which is now widely used in academic libraries in 91 countries worldwide.

It was found that as an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered real-time chatbot ChatGPT could effectively provide faculty and students with general guidance on locating the needed information resources and services in academic libraries, though its responses might not be accurate or truthful all the time. Embedded into the LibAnswers system of the Springshare’s products (www.springshare.com/libanswers/), LibChat serves as a real-time online chat tool used by academic libraries for reference services, but it is only available during the regular librarians' duty hours. This technical limitation does not meet the dynamic needs of faculty, students, staff, and local community users. Only well-optimized AI-driven chat products like ChatGPT could provide 24/7 online services to support uninterrupted academic library services in the future.

This study only examined the general capability and potential of ChatGPT3.5 in specific subject areas. Additional studies are needed to further explore how the latest capabilities of ChatGPT4.0 or newer version, such as its text-to-image, text-to-speech, text-to-text, text-to-video and Web search, could impact future reference services of academic libraries. ChatGPT’s primary optimization and upgrades in the future may also change and impact this study's findings. The comparison between ChatGPT and LibChat presents a significant breakthrough of the generative AI technology in academic libraries. This comparative study encourages more academic experts, faculty, librarians and scholars to track the advance of generative AI applications, including ChatGPT, adopted in academic learning environments. In addition, the ChatGPT's complete capability and potential enhanced and integrated in the future may go beyond what this study evaluated.

This study examined the strengths and weaknesses of ChatGPT applicable to reference services of academic libraries. Through a comparison between ChatGPT and LibChat, this study suggests that optimized AI online chatbots still have a long way to go to meet the dynamic needs of faculty and students in the ever-changing academic learning environments. To contribute to the existing research literature focusing on the rise of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, this study provides a valuable reference for the applicability of generative AI applications in academic libraries to promote more library creation and innovation in the coming years of the 21st century.

South Africa lags significantly in mathematics achievement on international benchmarking tests, which has led to several interventions aimed at improving mathematics attainment in the country. Drawing on the theoretical work of Vygotsky, Leontiev and Engeström, this chapter reports on one such initiative that implemented computer technology into disadvantaged schools in the apple growing district of the Western Cape. Contrary to expectations, the object of the lesson became control over students' actions, rather than a mathematical object aimed at developing students' understanding of the subject. The teacher adopted what I call a defensive position in relation to the novel technology, tightening pace and sequencing in these lessons. I draw on Ratnam's work into ‘excessive entitlement’ to illustrate that this teacher's defensive posture regarding technology emanates from a need to exert complete power over the content taught in a lesson and leads her to reject the novel technology in favour of traditional methods. While interviews with the teacher in this study indicated that she felt she promoted student dialogue and more symmetrical power relations in her classes through group work, this is not seen in the data. This is explained in relation to teachers' excessive entitlement to ‘owning’ the knowledge in their classrooms through maintaining control over the rules of the system. I pull on Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) to illuminate how the activity of teaching in a classroom affords and constrains what the teacher is able to achieve, often making them feel excessively entitled to push back reform.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the perceived usefulness and satisfaction levels of undergraduate students with respect to university library portal services, specifically within selected universities in South-West Nigeria.

A descriptive survey research design was used to investigate the perceived usefulness and satisfaction levels among undergraduate students regarding university library portal services. Data were collected through surveys administered to 658 undergraduate respondents across multiple universities in South-West Nigeria.

The findings indicate that undergraduate students’ top reasons for using the portal were for tasks such as locating research materials, accessing databases, requesting bibliographies and checking the library catalog. Library computers and school information and communication technology center computers were identified as the most preferred access point, followed by computer labs and campus Wi-Fi networks. Undergraduates rated the portals as highly useful, particularly for saving time locating resources, checking material status and patronizing the library. High satisfaction was reported for services such as attending workshops, events and receiving research support through the portals workshops. Moderate satisfaction levels existed for accessing policies/hours, the institutional repository and renewals of books online. A strong positive correlation (r = 0.785, p < 0.05) was found between perceived usefulness and satisfaction.

This study contributes to the understanding of undergraduate students’ perceptions regarding the utility and satisfaction of university library portal services in the context of South-West Nigeria. It underscores the importance of aligning portal services with students’ academic and research needs to enhance overall satisfaction levels. In addition, it provides insights into areas where improvements can be made to further enhance the effectiveness and satisfaction derived from these services.

This chapter presents a COVID-19 case study from the perspective of a library director’s workplace dynamics during the COVID-19 response implemented by the Blount County Public Library (BCPL) in Maryville, Tennessee, US. Prior to COVID-19, the BCPL had a robust program offering extensive use of the library’s resources and spaces. When the library shutdown in mid-March 2020 in response to the global COVID lockdown, staff continued to provide services to the public via online resources and curbside delivery of library materials. The library reopened to the public in July 2020 with extreme spatial protocols addressing staff and visitor safety. This case study looks at the COVID-driven changes and their impacts on the library staff, the library board, and the community at large, as well as evaluates the resulting permanent changes occurring due to deficits in funding, staffing levels, and the restructuring of library board procedures for handling library staff and working with the library director. This work reflects on the mental and behavioral responses to these issues and their impact on the operation of a public library during the pandemic.

This study aims to assess the effectiveness of different AI models in accurately aggregating information about the protein quality (PQ) content of food items using four artificial intelligence (AI) models -– ChatGPT 3.5, ChatGPT 4, Bard AI and Bing Chat.

A total of 22 food items, curated from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations (UN) report, were input into each model. These items were characterised by their PQ content according to the Digestible Indispensable Amino Acid Score (DIAAS).

Bing Chat was the most accurate AI assistant with a mean accuracy rate of 63.6% for all analyses, followed by ChatGPT 4 with 60.6%. ChatGPT 4 (Cohen’s kappa: 0.718, p < 0.001) and ChatGPT 3.5 (Cohen’s kappa: 0.636, p: 0.002) showed substantial agreement between baseline and 2nd analysis, whereas they showed a moderate agreement between baseline and 3rd analysis (Cohen’s kappa: 0.538, p: 0.011 for ChatGPT 4 and Cohen’s kappa: 0.455, p: 0.030 for ChatGPT 3.5).

This study provides an initial insight into how emerging AI models assess and classify nutrient content pertinent to nutritional knowledge. Further research into the real-world implementation of AI for nutritional advice is essential as the technology develops.

The purpose of this systematic literature review is to catalog, explore and disseminate knowledge developed related to the affordances, constraints and collaborative practices of e-mentoring in order to offer recommendations for mentoring programs.

After identifying studies utilizing inclusion and exclusion criteria and a variety of relevant databases, chosen studies were organized into three categories based on e-mentoring practices.

Results reflect chat-room-based e-mentoring and e-mentoring with a video component both to have various affordances and collaborative features. These forms of e-mentoring can potentially be relevant to new teachers’ needs, may promote community and are disconnected from mentees’ school systems. A third form of e-mentoring, virtual reality e-mentoring, however, has the potential for accessibility issues and lack of relevancy to the mentoring process.

Chat-room-based e-mentoring and e-mentoring with a video component may benefit new teachers who do not have access to in-person mentors. However, these forms of e-mentoring may necessitate a component that ensures mentors and mentees alike remain consistently engaged in the e-mentoring process.

As Ratnam makes clear, a cultural–historical perspective on teacher/faculty excessive entitlement is indispensable if we are to use this concept to work with, rather than undermine, education practitioners. In this chapter, a networked relational model of activity is proposed as a tool for understanding excessive entitlement from a cultural–historical activity theory (CHAT) perspective, so that the transformative potential of both entitlement and the modeling of it may be harnessed. The networked relational model, which represents CHAT activity systems as a hand-draw or painted network of relationships between actors and artifacts, allows its creators, in their capacity as researchers or academics, to use it as an imaginative artifact in the Wartofskian sense. That is, by representing activity systems of academic performance as networks of interacting entities, the emergence of excessive entitlement can be traced to, and perhaps mitigated through the relationships that they represent. In this regard, the why, what, and how artifacts proposed by Engeström are taken up as useful means for enhancing the functioning of the networked relational model not just as a tool for analyses of entitlement but also a means for envisioning alternative countercultures into being.

Academic libraries are having to reconsider personnel, collections, space, and budget. This paper provides examples of how rightsizing opportunities in those areas can be approached in a positive way.

Librarians at a small, rural, public university library approached rightsizing as an opportunity to shape the library in positive ways. This paper provides a reflection on those efforts in personnel, collections, space, and budget that have taken place over the past decade at this university, and highlights how the library’s role as the driver of these changes helped foster a positive culture.

This paper explains the ways the library is viewed both internally and externally as a more student-focused service and location. Examples in this paper may provide ideas for other libraries to utilize in their rightsizing efforts.

Historically, this library encountered forced cuts due to lower than anticipated enrollments and reduced funding from the state. This contributed to low morale and understandably defensive attitudes; however, these did not serve the library well. Post 2013, the library transitioned to a self-initiated approach to making changes. Some of these changes came about due to stagnation in budgets while others can be attributed to changes in staff due to retirements and new hires. Through this shift to proactive rightsizing, our library team has recognized we are adaptable and nimble. This has benefitted morale and helped the library grow a positive reputation on campus.