By Abby Lynn, Patron Services Librarian, and Gwennan Lawcock, Network Systems Specialist
Although AI can be a useful tool, the information it provides is often unreliable or incomplete. With the rise in AI-generated material, it can be difficult for patrons and library staff to discern what is AI-generated vs. human-generated. Kent District Library prioritizes human-generated content and strives to identify AI-generated content whenever possible. We asked our Collection Development Librarians some questions about AI-generated material in the library, and here’s what they had to say!
What can patrons do to ensure books they recommend for purchase aren't created by AI? What are some of the signs you look for to determine if a book was created using AI?
Read the reviews (professional review sources are preferred, but customer reviews are helpful too), check the author's credibility and digital footprint, like an author website or biography, and look closely at the cover and illustrations; do they seem AI-generated? Do the captions make sense? Does the language sound strange?
If I see a cookbook that says "1,500 recipes!" or something like that, I always take a closer look. That would be a huge cookbook!
What happens if the library does accidentally purchase an AI-generated book?
If a book's content seems to have blatantly inaccurate information or poor quality, it will get weeded from the collection. More authors are relying on AI to contribute to their writing or illustrations, and most publishers don't often identify if a book was written with AI contributions. Professional review sources are more important than ever to alert Collection Development librarians of a book's quality and credibility.
Does the process of evaluating digital material differ from physical material?
Like with a physical book, the team uses many criteria to determine what to add and keep in the digital collection, such as popularity, reviews from various publications and patron requests. Libby, for example, is a service where KDL’s Collection Development team pays for digital copies of books for patrons to borrow and return.
Hoopla is a pay-per-checkout service, and hoopla works to maintain the large collection of both popular and diverse books, movies, tv shows and music. Hoopla’s collection, however, is also limited to what content publishers make available to license for pay-per-checkout.
What steps has KDL taken to ensure our digital collection is free of AI-generated media?
Around the beginning of the AI boom, we started receiving feedback about some AI-generated content available on hoopla through their parent company Midwest Tape. Midwest Tape has a wide range of book summaries, similar to Spark Notes, and patrons noted that some summaries for very popular books were extremely brief and poorly written. In a few cases, the summaries didn’t even make sense. It turned out these were AI-generated summaries.
Content like this, where there is often little value or accuracy, is often referred to as “AI slop.” While low-quality content has always existed, AI has made it much easier to generate and publish this kind of content.
After receiving the feedback, we asked Midwest Tape to block this content so it would not appear on our hoopla platform. Hoopla is a popular and premium service for KDL patrons, so making sure patrons are satisfied with the quality of what’s available is important to us.
Now, Midwest Tape is able to block these types of items from appearing on the platform if publishers identify the material as AI-generated in the records they provide, or by flagging titles based on characteristics that indicate they are likely AI-generated.
Do you have any funny stories or anecdotes to share?
I did accidentally purchase a makeup tutorial book for a patron with zero images or illustrations of how to actually apply makeup, but instead just pages of text with helpful advice like, "apply the eyeliner." Oops!
One of my favorite AI slop purchase requests that (ALMOST!) got me is this one advertising on the cover "step by fingers!" which was my first clue this is likely AI-generated.
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