Yale Libraries declare AI a “key priority” for next five years

Yale News

In her next five years as a University Librarian, Barbara Rockenbach will focus on digitization access and AI, she told the News. 

After four years at Yale, Rockenbach has been reappointed to the position, in which she will continue leading Yale’s over 500 library staff members, dozen libraries and locations and millions of physical and digital records.

“We have such a strong, 300-year humanistic tradition at Yale, so it’s important that we continue to buy print books and invest in our special collections across the humanities,” said Rockenbach. “However, we also have this incredible opportunity to take our grounding in humanistic critical thinking and apply it to these new technologies by leaning into data science, computation, and AI.”

Since 2020, Rockenbach has led a variety of digitization projects, including expanding Yale’s digitized archival offerings, launching Yale Dataverse, establishing Yale Libraries’ Computational Methods and Data Department, forming staff partnerships with the Data-Intensive Social Science Center, and creating a book delivery by mail system.

According to Rockenbach, these efforts were started during the pandemic, when she first arrived at Yale and learned that many people did not have access to the University’s collections.

“During COVID, we had a period of almost two years where most outside researchers couldn’t access things in the Beinecke,” Rockenbach told the News. “That left us realizing that one of the greatest challenges is making everything available online. The collections are incredible, but they’re only incredible if you can see them.”

According to Lauren Di Monte, associate university librarian for Research and Learning, though thousands of Yale’s collections are now available online, only 1 to 2 percent of the entire University collection has actually been digitized so far. Proper digitization, she explained, can be difficult when it comes to deciding the “right materials” to “digitize in the right way.”

Both Di Monte and Rockenbach stated that making the collections increasingly accessible to New Haven residents, as well as nationally and internationally, is a driving factor of the project. 

Rockenbach also shared that libraries have been using AI tools to help them catalog and navigate their collections. She anticipates that in a few years, AI will take on a larger, front-facing role in libraries, where it can serve as patrons’ general guides to the vast collections while librarians provide more specific information.

“With new technologies, it’s a form of new literacy, right? Libraries have always been in the business of literacy — whether textual or visual — and now with AI and digitization, it’s just a new form of literacy,” said Rockenbach. “Our job is to think critically about the information ecosystem, and there’s a lot we can do to help students and faculty engage smartly with these new technologies — and with healthy skepticism.”

According to Di Monte, in addition to collections navigation, the library staff are collaborating with the Poorvu Center to develop AI research tools, guidance, and support for students and faculty.

“Providing access to data collections is a rapidly emerging and extremely important role for the library in facilitating and supporting research and academic work more broadly at Yale. Use of AI to make sense of rapidly expanding data collections is, and will continue to be, a critical tool,” Vice Provost of Research Michael Crair wrote to the News. “The library is in a unique position to develop these tools and services for Yale, and Ms. Rockenbach has brought impressive insight and energy to address this need.”

In a message to the Yale library community, University President Maurie McInnis and Provost Scott Strobel emphasized Rockenbach’s “ability to both honor the historic significance of Yale Library” and “introduce innovations that support the continued growth” as highlights of her work.

When asked what the greatest challenge university libraries face today, Rockenbach replied that she believes that public perception of higher education is at an “all-time low.”

“Not to get too political, but we’ve got an administration that isn’t valuing higher education in the way I would like,” said Rockenbach. “Our job is to work directly with students and researchers, so I think it makes sense for us to be a front door to AI, a front door to new data, research support, all these things. Being able to tell that story and that higher education is a place where one can learn, become an expert in something, and that that has value — that’s a challenge but a huge opportunity for us.” 

The Yale University Library system began in 1701 when a group of ministers donated books to a new “Collegiate School.”

CLAIRE NAM

Claire Nam covers the president's office. She is also an editor for the Yale Daily News Magazine. Originally from New York, she is a first year in Jonathan Edwards College.