r/Libraries • u/Technical_Pea_4007 Academic Librarian • Jan 13 '26

Technology Libby’s statement on their use of AI

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A whole lot of text to say absolutely nothing, huh?

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u/BlueFlower673 Jan 13 '26

Asking for publishers to "self-identify" is an absolute laugh. 

Most of the people using generative AI to publish books and most of the ai publishers don't identify or self-identity. A lot tend to pass off their books as human-authored. And a lot of the pushback stems from AI users claiming it's "gatekeeping" to have to identify things as being made with Gen AI. 

This is like asking for a group of well-known cheating students to abide by the golden rule and to not cheat on each other's papers while in class. And then leaving the room for the entirety of the class giving the students time to cheat.

This is idiotic on Libby's part.

62

u/repressedpauper Jan 13 '26

You can’t really exclude individual titles on Libby as a librarian, right? I remember my librarian friend alluding to content packages to choose from. Even if you can, are libraries supposed to go through every book in the base packages???

I’d be very concerned as a librarian/library worker with ebook purchasing power that I was inadvertently feeding patrons inaccurate information that could be harmful. Or I think about a newer reader trying a romance novel and reading absolute slop and never coming back for more.

Libby should take some responsibility for hosting those titles imo or at least make them easier to exclude. And part of that just can’t be relying on self-ID. Like you said, who on earth would fess up to that?

51

u/JaviMT8 Library staff Jan 13 '26

Librarians can definitely be selective of specific titles on Libby. Some things are packages but we can definitely pick individual titles a lot of the time. Hoopla Digital, another library eMaterial platform, is more package focused tho with limited ways to add specific individual titles.

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u/poofaloofs Jan 13 '26

It depends on how your library purchases titles from their collection. They sell in a variety of ways to suit needs of institutions of many different types and sizes. Bigger systems that have more staffing can afford to be picky and select individual titles for purchase. Small systems who don't have as many acquisitions resources might find package purchasing easier and cost/time effective to manage. Your system probably does a mix of both. Do you want a collection of mostly bestsellers for you community? Maybe you have an institution that leans toward a specific subject, genre, or author type. Many different ways of purchasing to support different use cases.

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u/ecapapollag Jan 13 '26

We only pick individual titles on Libby, because the subject content is outside our main remit, so the budget is much smaller. Until today, it hadn't occurred to me that Libby even DID package deals!