Discovery – The Distant Librarian

Updates to the Ithaka AI Product Tracker

Dec 2, 2025

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One of the best collections of education-related AI tools, the Ithaka S+R Generative AI Product Tracker has been upgraded from Google Sheets to Airtable, according to a post on the Ithaka blog. They’ve also taken the opportunity to tweak which tools they’re covering: We have also refined the scope of the tracker. While our tracker…

2023 Access Conference Recordings

Jan 30, 2024

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Paul R. Pival

in AI, Discovery, Ideas, Scholarship, Web/Tech

There's not (yet?) a link to each recording in the original schedule, but the recordings from the 2023 Access Library Conference, held in Halifax on October 23-25, 2023, are now live on YouTube. Definitely some good stuff worth checking out!

Have you trained an AI?

Apr 21, 2023

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Paul R. Pival

in AI, Discovery, Random Tech Tips, Social Networks

Thanks to Mita Williams for pointing to this Washington Post article that makes it trivial to search and see whether any sites you're affiliated with have been used to train "Google’s C4 data set, a massive snapshot of the contents of 15 million websites that have been used to instruct some high-profile English-language AIs, called…

Bing Chat and a quick Library Metadata test

Feb 21, 2023

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Paul R. Pival

in AI, Discovery, Ideas, Scholarship, Web/Tech

I just got access to Bing Chat, so let's see what it can do in the library world. I found myself on the monthly AI4LAM Community Call first thing this AM, and the topic was the use of ChatGPT in Libraries, Archives and Museums. While not my area of expertise, one of the examples shared…

Quick review: An AI toolkit for libraries

Nov 4, 2022

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Paul R. Pival

in AI, Discovery, Ideas, Scholarship, Service, Tutorials, Web/Tech

Even more on artificial intelligence. I'm going to create a new category for this blog! I just finished reading An AI toolkit for libraries, by Michael Upshall, in UKSG Insights. I found it to provide a really good background on what artificial intelligence is, and isn't, including some examples of some basic narrow AI currently…

ResearchBuzz Search Gizmos – a collection of search tools based on 25+ years of tinkering

Oct 5, 2022

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Paul R. Pival

in Discovery, Ideas, Social Networks, Web/Tech

Over at ResearchBuzz, Tara has had a busy summer learning JavaScript in order to satisfy her cravings for simple search tools that only exist in her head. The result is RB Search Gizmos, which you should definitely check out. As I continue to be a daily RSS user, one of the first I gravitated towards…

tl;dr papers rolls into Elicit?

Aug 12, 2022

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Paul R. Pival

in Discovery, Ideas, Scholarship, Social Networks

Early this year, there was some buzz about a new site called tl;dr papers, which claimed to "use machine learning to summarize arguments in scientific papers so that even a seven-year-old could understand them". From the moment I tried to visit the site it was down, so I put a watch on it, hoping to…

Under the Influence: Long Overdue: The Creative Boom of Library Marketing

Jan 31, 2022

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Paul R. Pival

in Discovery, Miscellaneous, Social Networks

One of the most well-written podcasts (oh, and I guess it's a radio show too) out there is Terry O'Reilly's Under The Influence. Terry tells stories of how marketing works (and sometimes doesn't), and it's always an entertaining and fascinating half-hour. His most recent episode, Season 11, episode 3, is Long Overdue: The Creative Boom…

More proof that information wants to be free?

Jul 21, 2021

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Paul R. Pival

in Discovery, Linking, Scholarship

Originally noted by ResearchBuzz, from PsyPost: The “Sci-Hub effect” can almost double the citations of research articles, study suggests. The researchers found that articles downloaded from Sci-Hub were cited more frequently compared to articles not downloaded from Sci-Hub. After controlling for variables such as the number of figures included in a paper, title length, the…

New to me: Google Scholar “Public Access” feature

Jun 25, 2021

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Paul R. Pival

in Discovery, Linking, Scholarship

I was alerted to a new(ish?) feature within Google Scholar earlier this week by this blog post: What does this new Google Scholar “Public Access” feature mean for me or my work? More information on the Google Scholar site itself: https://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/citations.html?1#publicaccess. From that original post: The new Google Scholar feature is a reminder that it…

Category: Discovery