(16 Dec 2024) Google Scholar turned 20 last month and Nature wrote a piece with the title “Can Google Scholar survive the AI revolution?” and quoted as saying “Up until recently, Google Scholar was my default search,” says Aaron Tay, an academic librarian at Singapore Management University. It’s still top of his list, but “recently, I started…
(4 Dec 2024) AI-assisted document query and summarization services are becoming more common. This post compares the ‘ask a PDF’ outputs of several services. Overall responses were good, with reasonable variation, and no significant hallucinations. It also touches on some characteristics of AI-based services. Lorcan Dempsey shares his observation on such services including Microsoft…
(13 Nov 2024) Choice has a mission to help collection development librarians in higher education choose the best titles for their collections. Students and library vendors are pushing AI adoption in higher education, but there are very few resources that help librarians and scholars separate the wheat from the chaff. In this blog post, key…
(4 Sep 2024) Digital Science today announces the launch of Papers Pro, an AI-enhanced premium version of its acclaimed reference manager, Papers. As part of the ReadCube suite of literature solutions, Papers Pro is designed to make researchers and students more productive in their daily tasks by integrating cutting-edge AI tools to transform how they discover,…
(28 June 2024) Cassie Richards describes her secondment with the Digital Collection Services team at Alexander Turnbull Library, focusing on digital archiving. She highlights the fragility of born-digital materials, the use of write-blockers and checksums, and the importance of programs like DROID. Her experience underscores the necessity of professional digital preservation for both institutional and…
(27 June 2024) Clarivate Plc released the 2024 Journal Citation Reports™ (JCR™), ranking high-quality journals globally. Key updates include unified subject category rankings, integration of Emerging sources citation index journals, and new metrics for over 21,800 journals. This enhances understanding of journal performance and supports research integrity. Find out more here.
(1 May 2024) The library technology industry had a quiet year in 2023. But in the absence of major business moves and acquisitions, companies set their sights on executing strategies to strengthen their market position. Previous cycles of business consolidation have yielded a layered landscape with distinct levels of competition. At the top, a…
(27 Mar 2024) ChatGPT and many other LLMs suffer from a big limitation: though they spool out endless streams of information, they don’t give their citations. Given the possibility of hallucinations, i.e., information that LLMs “make up,” being able to check a LLM’s sources is not only useful—it’s vital. Doing so is also a good exercise…
(20 Mar 2024) AI’s ability to quickly generate article summaries from a single question is always fascinating. The paragraphs are often well structured, and many do include real sources. But how accurate is the generated content? Do the sources support their statements? Can this summary be treated as literature review? In this post, Aster Zhao of The…
(7 Mar 2024) Form Ithaka S+R: As part of our Making AI Generative for Higher Education project, conducted in partnership with 19 colleges and universities, Ithaka S+R has been closely tracking the GAI product landscape through a unique Product Tracking Tool. The Product Tracker includes a basic description of GAI tools marketed towards postsecondary faculty or…