ChatGPT & School Libraries

 I hadn't really known a lot about ChatGPT until a few months ago, I don't really think about Artificial Intelligence a lot, but maybe I should.

If you are unsure what ChatGPT is, it's an artificial intelligence chatbot. You give it a task or ask it a question, it responds. It is much more than an alternative to Google, though.

On the surface it appears to be thinking about what it is doing and can respond with eerie accuracy and with a lot of detail. It is, in my opinion, not a fact-giving machine but rather a conversation / idea generator. 

I understand people's fears that students will be asking it to write their papers for them, however I think it has a lot of potential to be useful to libraries.

So, perhaps as a way to appease our soon-to-be robot overlords, here are some ways I think ChatGPT can be used for good!

Before you make a ChatGPT account and start plying it with questions / prompts, it is important to know that:

• Anything you ask it can be sent to law enforcement & other 3rd party vendors as per its privacy policy.
• Under 18s should not be engaging with this programme as per its terms of agreement. 
• Anything you ask / tell it cannot be deleted.
• It has limited knowledge on topics after 2021 & therefore will make things up if asked. 
• It is not connected to the internet (I don't understand this either).
• If it doesn't know something, it simply makes it up, much like humans do. Notoriously, it will create fake academic sources for bibliographies. 

So, who is ready to start?

I feel, at the moment, that ChatGPT can be used beneficially in the following ways:

Reader's Advisory: Here's an example, you can tell ChatGPT: "I really enjoyed Rules for Vampires by Alex Foulkes, what should I read next?"  and it will provide a list of books that are related to that title. Of course, insert any other book / tv  show / film. I think this has great potential for helping a librarian who is possibly harried or busy. Sure, it's our job to know what similar books are out there but being a librarian can be a very isolating position. This thing could possible act as a very, very basic library helper who can give you a list of books to recommend in the blink of an eye. 

Display Creation: This relates to the point above, need to create a display? ChatGPT could throw together some ideas to create something eye-catching and attractive. 

Quizzes: We use quizzes a lot in the library, it's a good way to get students in or to celebrate an event. ChatGPT will create a quiz for you, however, as mentioned, it sometimes makes things up, so you need to check out the answers. 

Writing Prompts: Someone said this to me about ChatGPT recently: it removes the anxiety that comes from staring at the blank page. I agree with this, it can provide limitless prompts / ideas for writing and being creative. Yes, it can go too far, yes, you can ask it to write a 10 page paper for you. This is where librarians come in if you ask me. We need to be the ones guiding students through the process, ensuring they are using it responsibly, even though technically they shouldn't be using it at all (but probably are). 

Explanatory Guide: What I like about ChatGPT is that it could potentially act as a guide to understanding complex issues or topics. Of course, don't use current news topics as it will probably make it all up, but if you're thinking about historical concepts and ideas, and your students are struggling, it might be a great tool.

I also want to use it with our older students on how to write something like a literature review or bibliography, even if it's just to provide a good example. 

Programme Development: Need an idea for a craft club, manga club, book club questions? It might save you an absolute ton of time. I run D&D a lot in my library, I've already asked it, for fun, to create a D&D campaign. That's it, I wrote "write me a D&D campaign" & it created a 5-point summary of what I should do to create an effective campaign. I was very impressed, I couldn't find anywhere that it had copied and pasted it from the net. And the ideas were genuinely great. 

Example Generator: I really recommend reading this article on the topic. Here's an example, you can ask ChatGPT to provide you with info, like "Give me the life cycle of a star"

It will provide you with the answer.

Now, you can say "Do the same thing, but give me the answers in the wrong order"

It will also do this for you. So we can see the potential for learning is there but how heavily humans must be involved in the process. 

I am not an expert, I am definitely still learning about this, but these are the ways I think ChatGPT can help. Yes there is a lot of trepidation out there but I think it is something that will exist whether we want it to or not.