Librarians Are Helping the Public Ditch AI w/ Hannah Cyrus & Alison Macrina

Librarians are working harder than ever to support their neighbourhoods — including by teaching and promoting digital literacy. Hannah Cyrus and Alison Macrina join Paris Marx to discuss the role of library workers in the digital landscape, including how they’re helping patrons navigate privacy basics and artificial intelligence, and how the tech industry is making their jobs harder. 

Hannah Cyrus is a digital media librarian at the Bangor Public Library. Alison Macrina is an activist librarian and the director of Library Freedom Project.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Kyla Hewson. Support the show on Patreon.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Click here to get your first month of Proton Mail for just $1.
• The Library Freedom Project has a ton of resources on critically approaching technology.
• Bangor Daily News wrote about librarians like Hannah helping patrons get AI off their devices.
• Shout out to friend of the pod Brian Merchant and his book Blood in the Machine.
• Learn more about the Luddite Club.
• Learn more about the organization Libraries For The People, working to strengthen and expand libraries.
• Support your local library! Say hello, get a card if you don’t have one, and participate in community events.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Libraries are part of a network of social support that should all be robustly funded and working together to serve the community so that we can all focus on what we're best at. But when all of those other institutions start to fall away, libraries are left trying to hold the community kind of more on our own.

SPEAKER_02 0:46

A few weeks ago, we discussed the way that generative AI is moving into schools and the effect that that has on students and teachers. But I was also curious what this new technological moment might mean for librarians as well. Both, you know, how they are responding to generative AI, but also what it means to be a librarian in an age with all of this digital technology and certainly library patrons who are looking for information on how to use these things, but also just trying to understand it better, right? To develop this kind of digital literacy so that they can have more power over their own lives and their relationship to these technologies that we're all expected to use today. And I couldn't have had two better guests to talk about that than Hannah and Allison. Hannah is in a library herself and actually gives classes to patrons on how to get generative AI tools off of their devices and get them to try to stop interfering in, you know, the patrons' lives, but also, you know, helps people to learn how to get off of Google and to think more about their privacy online and so many other aspects of engaging in this digital world. While Allison leads this project that helps to inform librarians on doing just that, to give libraries the tools that they need to understand the technologies that they're encountering and that we're all encountering in our lives, but also to inform their patrons about what it means to live in this modern world. And, you know, it is a very important project and a very important role. And you can see how that kind of filters down to help so many different people as these librarians are informed and then can pass that information on or feel empowered, you know, to help to inform the people who they are coming into contact with in their libraries across the United States and Canada in particular, where the Library Freedom Project is most active. We discuss so much in this conversation from dealing with generative AI and those questions to what it actually means to be a digital media librarian today, how libraries act and how they have evolved over many years to serve the new needs of their communities, what it means to support libraries in this day and age. And I think one of the important things that we talk about that is not wholly related to generative AI, but is actually how the licenses for digital media and ebooks cost libraries a lot of money in a way that patrons don't always realize. Um is something that we should be more aware about as people who use libraries, but also, you know, on the legislative side, to make sure our governments actually finally do something about this. Um, because, you know, this kind of licensing regime of digital products isn't really working for very many people. And it's certainly not working for libraries. So that's all to say that I think that this is a fascinating conversation to understand where libraries are today and what library workers are dealing with. As, you know, libraries are one of those essential public institutions that not just need to be protected, but need to be better funded and expanded because of the role that they play in our communities now, but also because they can provide so much more if we just give them the resources to do so. So I really enjoyed talking to Hannah and Allison. I think that you're really going to enjoy this conversation. You can certainly find some resources in the show notes if you want to learn more about some of the things that they are talking about. Um, but really, I just think that this is a great conversation and I think you're really going to like it. And of course, if you do, you can make sure to leave a five-star view on your podcast platform of choice. You can share the show on social media or with any friends or colleagues who you think would learn from it. And if you do want to support the work that goes into making tech won't save us every single week, so I can keep having these conversations to inform you about how, you know, people in different sectors are pushing back on these technologies and helping to better inform the people that they come in contact with about, you know, the technologies that we're all depending on in our lives. You can join supporters like Eric in Berlin and Scott in Bozeman, Montana by going to patreon.com slash TechWon't Save Us, where you can become a supporter as well. Thanks so much and enjoy this week's conversation. Hannah, welcome to Tech Won't Save Us.

SPEAKER_00 4:58

Hey, thanks so much for having me.

SPEAKER_02 5:00

Absolutely. Great to have you on the show. And Allison, thanks for joining us too. I'm very excited to chat with you both. Uh, you know, there was uh an article about kind of Hannah's, I guess, work uh at the library there in Bangor in uh the Bangor Daily News, I think it was called. I was like fascinated to read about how librarians are kind of like, you know, informing the public, but also reacting to like this kind of digital moment that we're in. Um and of course, I've heard I had heard of the Library Freedom Project as well. So I'm happy to have you both like on the same show to discuss the work that librarians are doing and that you both are doing in this moment. And I wanted to start by talking a bit specifically about what each of you are doing. And I was gonna talk uh to Hannah first and ask you, what does it mean to be a digital media librarian and what is actually involved in that?

SPEAKER_00 5:53

Yeah, it's funny because I always think that job title is a little bit weird. Like it makes me sound like I'm some kind of chatbot. But I'm a flesh and blood human librarian. Um, I'm a reference librarian. So, you know, primarily my job is to help connect people with information, but my focus is on technology instruction. So, so much information these days is mediated by digital technologies, and so many people seeking information need to go through digital technologies in order to find it. Um, so that's I think why my role exists at my library is to just kind of be everyone is doing this work, but I'm especially focused on trying to help people navigate those challenges.

SPEAKER_02 6:34

That makes a lot of sense. And would a digital media librarian be like a common position for many libraries to have today, or is it still not as common as maybe we would like? Or, you know, do you have an idea of that?

SPEAKER_00 6:48

I think it depends on the size of your library. So like Maine's a pretty small state. I work at a big library for the state. It's small on a lot of other scales, but it's big for Maine. Um, so I'm I think there's not a lot of other libraries sort of in my state, in my community, that have a dedicated, like full-time position focused on this. But a lot of libraries are doing this work, right? Like any reference librarian, anybody staffing a public desk is going to be getting questions related to technology.

SPEAKER_02 7:16

Absolutely. You know, it's inevitable today, right? Um, and uh, especially in the generative AI age. And I'm I'm excited to ask you about what that has meant for your jobs. But Alison, I want to switch to talking about you because you know you're the executive director of the Library Freedom Project. Can you talk to me about what that is and how you got involved in doing this kind of work?

SPEAKER_01 7:36

Sure. Library Freedom Project is an organization that's devoted to political education around critical technology for librarians. And just so you know, we often interchangeably say library workers, because those of us on the left in the library world like to put the worker forward in that way. But like, you know, we say both. So for library workers, librarians to engage with understanding how technology works in our world, the power relationships that are inherent, how it impacts our communities, especially in the more harmful and exploitative ways, the ways that it is a tenet of the fascist state and of the corporate surveillance state and all those horrible, creepy crawly things. So we do a lot of trainings for library workers, um, helping them engage with these issues and helping them to bring that information into the library. Like Hannah said, a lot of librarians are really like de facto tech workers. They're providing tech education, they're supporting people from basically all walks of life in understanding their technology. And so I started LFP having, you know, working as a librarian because I saw that there was an opportunity to have a deeper critical engagement and a lot of librarians who are ready for that kind of information. And I'm sure we'll talk about that. So we do political education, we also do a lot of resource development, so building curricula, like what Hannah is going to tell you about her workshops, as well as resources for like passive engagement around technology, and then also very importantly, community engagement, community development for librarians who care about these issues together. Because, as you know, we very much need to find our people. We need to collaborate, we need to commiserate. And so we do a lot of that kind of community building across the US and Canada.

SPEAKER_02 9:28

That's fantastic. And I imagine that this is an organization that's kind of run by library workers for library workers. Is that right?

SPEAKER_01 9:36

Definitely. So we just have a few full-time staff, but we're all, you know, we all uh came from working in in actual libraries. I worked in libraries for more than a decade before I when I started LFP. And um we have close to 200 members around the country, people who've taken our intensive training. And so Hannah is one of our members. Um, and those folks are working actually in libraries, a lot of them in public, some of them in academics, some in school libraries. Um, but these issues are coming up in all of those environments, of course.

SPEAKER_02 10:11

That that's so fascinating to hear. And and like it's really cool to hear as well that there's an organization that exists like this to support library workers in that way. And I wonder for you, Hannah, then, I guess, what has the benefit been of you know being able to access the resources that the Library Freedom Project has in the work that you are doing, you know, at the public library where you are.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

Yeah, I mean, so many, so many different benefits. I went through Library Freedom Institute, which is sort of the flagship training that LFP does that kind of ushers folks into the community of practice. And like just going through that, learned a lot of really great information that I was able to take back to my work and back to my community. You know, I've been interested in privacy issues and I've been following LFP's work for years before I took the training, but having the opportunity to really like focus on something intensive, you know, my like final project for LFI was doing a privacy audit in my library. So talking to other people on staff, department heads, you know, other library workers here about what are all of the ways in which we collect data about our patrons, whether that's on purpose when they're signing up for a library card, or incidentally because you know, we're keeping logs of this or that, or you know, people signing up to use study rooms or registering for programs, and like where is that information stored? How long do we keep it? Who has access to it, just to try to like wrap our heads around the information environment on a very small scale within our own institution and try to make sure that our practices are in alignment with our policies and our values.

SPEAKER_02 11:49

That's really fascinating. Um, I and I and I wonder then how this work has changed, even just in the time that you have been doing this. Like, you know, Alison, you said that you have been uh, you know, running the Library Freedom Project for more than a decade. I I'm sure things, you know, a lot of things are the same. We're still dealing with a lot of the same technologies uh over the past decade, but I imagine that the the work of doing this has evolved over that time as well. Can you talk a bit about how you have seen things change just even in that period of time?

SPEAKER_01 12:17

I think the biggest things, you know, when I first got started, what one of the motivations for me getting started on this work was that I became obsessed with the Snowden uh revelations and really like fixated on it, learned everything I could, was involved with a little bit of like free and open source software prior to that, but I felt like something that was missing from the fervor around Snowden was like, what about your just like regular, dagular, schmegular person who's not maybe a journalist or someone with like a very serious and high-level threat model? How do they get impacted by mainly thinking about surveillance technologies and mainly thinking about government surveillance? And obviously, unfortunately, those things have only changed for the worse in 11 years. Some positive things, changes that I've seen, uh, number one is that through my work, I've been able to connect with so many hundreds of librarians who are very, I, you know, my my sort of like supposition when I got started, I was like, there have to be other people like me who care about this and who see the library as a space of opportunity. We engage with such a broad and diverse public. People trust us, we're already providing technology education. We're seeing in a lot of ways like some of the most impacted people. How can we bridge this and and create public education around it? And so in that time, yeah, I've learned that there are there are actually tons and tons of librarians, so not just folks who are members of Library Freedom Project, and not just those who are like really leading the charge like Hannah, um, but all kinds of people who maybe like want to teach one class or do one privacy audit or you know, just like elevate their knowledge and experience a little bit. And then the other big change that I think is really noteworthy, especially in light of this conversation, and you've probably seen this too, Paris, like, you know, 11 years ago, even five years ago, there would be so many things that I would try to get people hype about, like surveillance technologies, ad tech, um, you know, all sorts of all the bad bads. And, you know, lots of people would say things like, well, yeah, that's bad, but like I just love the Instagram ads or whatever, right? Like getting people motivated to care could be really challenging. Not so with um our era of AI hype and slop. That I think the the number of people who are now the backlash is much more significant, and I and I see it extending sort of backwards, you know. So, in other words, like people hate AI so much and they see all of those power dynamics that we're trying to um make more visible, and they're applying them to other technologies that they hadn't had that analysis of prior. So social media and advertising and all sorts of like corporate garbage. They're like, oh, wait, yeah, these were all bad ideas in a lot of ways. We should have had some kind of intervention, there should have been guardrails and there weren't. And so um, I think that is really, really fascinating and definitely like certainly makes our work a little bit easier, even if the problems are much bigger.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

I totally agree. When I first started working here in Bangor about five years ago, I offered a class called Break Up with Facebook. And pretty much all my tech classes are usually, you know, in high demand and pretty full. And that one, not a lot of people were interested in coming to. I had a handful of people who came and appreciated it. But you know, afterwards I was like, okay, I guess, you know, I probably won't offer that one again. There wasn't a ton of interest. Just go back to intro to computers. But then, you know, last year after my mom asked me for help deleting her Facebook account, I was like, maybe the time is now. So, and now I've run like a whole series on breaking up with big tech that's been much more popular than it was five years ago. So I definitely see things shifting in that direction.

SPEAKER_02 16:13

That's so fascinating because I I did see that you were running a class on like de-googling yourself as well. And I was like, I was like, I know that these conversations are happening, but I'm surprised to to see that it has such a degree of interest in like, you know, among more regular people that libraries are even like offering classes on how to like degoogle de Google your life now.

SPEAKER_00 16:34

Oh yeah, they're popular. People are coming to them. People are asking, when are you doing it again?

SPEAKER_02 16:40

No way. That's so awesome. Um and and like you were saying, Allison, like the the fact that it it does kind of feel like it has reached a kind of tipping point for people where it's like the generative AI is the thing that puts them over to over the ledge, but then they can apply that to so many of the other technologies that, you know, have problems, but in many cases have also gotten worse over the years, too. And it's like, I don't like the AI, I also don't like what has happened to all these other things, like what has gone wrong here and what do we do about this, right? So I I wonder, you know, you've given me a good insight into how things have evolved over the past while, but I'm I'm wondering a bit more about what goes into actually doing this work on and what you're hearing from people as well, right? So, you know, maybe you can give me and the listeners some insight into what the job of a librarian, especially a librarian, you know, concerned with these digital issues, actually looks like in 2026. Because, you know, I'm sure there will be some people who will be like very well informed about what it means to be a librarian today, and there will still be some people who are like, librarians lend out books, right? You know, so maybe maybe you can tune us in uh uh into like the modern role of a librarian.

SPEAKER_00 17:51

Yeah, and we do loan out books, and I love books, and people love books, and print books are not going anywhere, but we do a lot more than that too, right? Um, yeah, I think you know, in my work specifically focused on technology instruction, it is a big wide gamut. You know, it's everything from helping somebody fill out a job application to apply for a job online to helping them create an email account in order to fill out a job application because they don't already have an email address or they need to access information about their social security account in order to apply for heating assistance. So there's just all of these different hoops that people have to jump through. And, you know, for some of us it's a pain, but it's doable. And for people with really limited digital literacy who don't necessarily own a smartphone, who don't have a computer or internet access at home, who have never had to do this before, they need a lot of help. And I think libraries are one of the only places out there, as far as I've discovered, that is providing that kind of assistance. Um, so we get a lot of people, you know, whether it's looking to print off something and scan it or do something a little bit more complicated in terms of querying databases and doing online research. It's really everything and anything that you could imagine.

SPEAKER_02 19:11

It's bringing to mind like about 10 years ago, I was traveling a lot, you know, and and like living in different countries and things like that. And you know, it's a it's a very different situation than what you're talking about. But for me, like libraries were also always the place where I would go to be able to work, to like know where I could get an internet connection, to like, you know, connect with family or or anything like that. If I if I did know where I could get it somewhere else, it was, you know, and I noticed that like a lot of people would go there to rely on it as a place to access the computer if they didn't have like you know a regular full computer at home. Maybe they were just relying on a smartphone or something like that, other than that, or to be able to like print documents if they needed to fill out some kind of uh a form or an application or or whatnot, right? Like it was a very important resource that I feel like a lot of people don't realize kind of the role and the utility that it still plays in society for a lot of people, right?

SPEAKER_01 20:06

I think that reliability, I mean, that you talk about, you know, over and over again, whenever there's some kind of public polling about public trust, libraries are are like the only public resource that's left. Like the post office sort of maybe ranks like slightly lower, but that people still maintain a really high level of trust and belief in when their trust in any other government entity is like completely eroded. And not to mention like their trust in private entities as well. And so they know that they can count. If nobody got me, the library got me. And I think that, you know, part of our part of what Hannah is talking about, it's not just about the opportunities for digital literacy, um, but also for broader information and media literacy, because the platforms that we're engaging with are the the whole sort of like power dynamic of our media now. And so helping our our patrons not only access these resources that they need to live their lives, but helping them to gain a deeper understanding. Like, what is the algorithm that we talk about? What how is it making decisions for me based on what it thinks about me? What does it quote unquote think about me? What does it know? And people, what we've learned is that like people are really open to getting this deeper level of engagement from their librarian. And it's part of the reason why Hannah, I think, has been so successful and so many people are coming to a fairly small community and showing up over and over again for these classes because there's a great desire to know.

SPEAKER_02 21:42

Can I ask you about that too, Hannah? Because you know, we've mentioned a couple of times that you run these workshops. Like, where did the idea come from to put on these workshops that are more than just like how to use a computer, but you know, are looking more into, I guess, you know, really the the politics of technology and you know, the way that that uh Affects people's lives and kind of giving people, I guess, even more agency over the technologies that they use and rely on.

SPEAKER_00 22:08

Honestly, like for me, it all comes from the patrons. Like library patrons come up to me and ask questions. I do one-on-one appointments with people. People come up to the desk, and I try to really just like tune in and pay attention to what questions are people asking and what questions are people really asking. It's not always the first question out of their mouth for what they actually want to know. And, you know, I work a lot with older adults. Maine's the oldest state in the nation. Um, and there's a lot of older adults that need help with digital literacy that, you know, are frustrated trying to get help from their kids and grandkids. And, you know, I think a lot of people with less digital literacy and less fluency are naturally skeptical. So the questions they were asking me were things like, you know, should I do this? Is this safe? Um, people love to ask if something is safe, and I always have to say, it depends, what does safety mean to you? But then that's a great opportunity, right, to have a bigger conversation with someone. I don't just say, yeah, yeah, Chrome is safe. Go ahead. I say, well, what are you concerned about? Are you worried about your bank account? Or are you worried about, you know, a corporation having information on file about you that they're going to sell to advertisers and data brokers? Like, where are we on the different levels of concern? And, you know, through those conversations, you tease out kind of people's fears, people's doubts, people's needs. Um, and I try to design my classes around those things. So, like when a bunch of people kept coming to the desk saying, Is there any way to get this thing to stop trying to write my emails for me? I was like, you know, I'd better make a class about this. Um, or people saying, you know, what is this? Why is some a lovely woman told me, why is everything trying to get me to use owl? And I was like, you're right, it's really frustrating. Um, but yeah, it comes from the community, it comes from the patrons, and I just try to respond to what their needs are and what their concerns are, and like reassure them that like those concerns are legitimate. People get really sort of surprised when I affirm that they're like, I don't know, I'm just really worried about doing this because like I don't want them to know everything about me. And I'm like, yeah, you shouldn't have to trade away that information to access basic services. Or like, yeah, I agree. This is a really frustrating loop that we're in where they're trying to send a text to your landline and you're here at the library trying to get in. So I think, you know, responding to the patron in front of you and affirming that like their concerns are reasonable. And even if other people that they know in their lives are using these things without any thought, um, that it's actually good that they're thinking critically about it.

SPEAKER_01 24:48

First of all, Hannah is exemplary in her passion and her energy and just the fact that like people know her as the resource. Like, sure, the Bangor Daily News thing went viral, but she was basically already viral before that. People were asking her for her training materials, and she's done some um webinars that, like, you know, hundreds of librarians have shown up to. But I want to note that Hannah's community is not actually that different from other library communities. And a great deal of the work that we do in Library Freedom Project of building resources and building these trainings are exactly what Hannah is speaking to. That we, our librarian members and our extended network is hearing these needs and we're responding to them, and we're responding with clear factual information and validation of how bad things suck. And you can really get far with people when you're like, yeah, I hate that too. Let me show you what I've learned. And so, you know, we want to give Hannah her flowers and lift up her work. And also, there are a lot of other librarians who are doing this kind of stuff both within the LFP network and beyond. And something that we really try to impart to our members and in our trainings is that you can do this too. You can do this, and we have the materials to help you, or take Hannah's training and use it. Um, but you have exactly what you need to provide this service for your patrons.

SPEAKER_02 26:14

I was gonna ask you like where the motivation for the different resources comes from. So it's not surprising, of course, that it comes from the librarians and from you know the people of the library community who are asking them for particular support as well to inform that. But but I imagine, you know, based on what you're both saying, that for a lot of people, especially if you're talking to older folks who come into the library, if they're asking, you know, younger people in their family for help with some of these technologies, they're probably not hearing that affirmation of their concerns with the technologies in many cases as well, right? So they're probably also getting like a more informed or a more critical perspective on the way that these technologies are working and and you know are affecting their lives than they might get by just asking their grandkid how to set up a Gmail account or their kid to set up a Gmail account or something like that, right?

SPEAKER_01 27:07

Yeah, and a lot of what we do in LFP is like like what Hannah was saying about like figuring out what that question below the question is, right? Like helping people understand what is the algorithm. I think very few people will come up and have that specific question, but they do want to know that answer. And so sort of digging a little deeper, as well as giving librarians the skills to unearth some of those questions. So one big thing that we teach in LFP is about threat modeling. So helping understand how your community members are impacted by exploitative technologies and by the loss of privacy and all this other stuff, and what specific things that they might need to know. You know, especially if someone comes to you and they're really scared, you know, they're like, maybe they're an activist, they're engaged in anti-ICE organizing in their community, and they got handed a sheet of paper by a well-meaning anarchist that said, you know, okay, you first you have to completely switch your phone to graphene OS. And they're like, I don't know what any of these words mean. Your librarian can help if they've been trained in threat modeling, if they've done some of our uh use some of our resources, they can help to say, look, here's what you actually need to do, and here's what you don't need to do, and I'm gonna help you through that process. I'm right here with you.

SPEAKER_02 28:23

I I I had not even considered that as like a role that uh a librarian could play. Like, I I'm learning, I'm learning so much.

SPEAKER_01 28:29

Um, your librarians today, Paris. We're answering your question, we're doing information literacy.

SPEAKER_02 28:36

I appreciate it. And it brings me back to something that I was mentioning to both of you before we got on the call, just in terms of you know, getting information. But but I read this story that before Google, you know, before search engines, that people would just call up the library to get information. And of course, you know, I asked you both if this was accurate, and I was surprised by your answer. So maybe you could uh you know inform the listeners as to as to how things worked and and how they still work today.

SPEAKER_00 29:03

Yeah, well, my answer was uh that is true, and in fact, it is still true when I'm on the public reference desk, you know, the phone is ringing every day with people with a variety of information questions from hey, can you look up the phone number for this business? To, you know, I can you find uh information for me about this piece of celebrity gossip that I heard about on TV, or can you print out this recipe? Yeah, it's it's anything and everything. And I think it's easy to forget that not everybody has the same access to information and digital literacy and fluency with navigating the internet. Um, but many, many people are still relying on library reference desks for, yeah, what's the weather going to be tomorrow?

SPEAKER_01 29:48

We appreciate how much the information landscape has become so inshidified, um, how much misinformation there is out there. You know, we've as a society, we, you know, we used to say things like, oh, well, we, you know, maybe we don't need libraries anymore because all the info is now on the internet. Well, it's really not. The internet is just a very narrow slice of what, you know, the world's knowledge, um, not to mention its ability to unearth what someone might need from that knowledge corpus. And like, you know, Google going to AI agentic searching, like, people can't actually find the things that they need. And so librarians are not just fielding these, like, you know, really sort of basic, what you might seem as basic questions, but things that are a little bit higher need because even if it's something that the person used to be able to find on their own, the internet has now gotten so much worse that this is a big part of our role is helping to parse some of the signal through the noise there.

SPEAKER_00 30:50

Yeah. How do I find health information about this issue my doctor just told me I had that I can actually trust? I mean, these are things that we get asked every day. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:01

Yeah, it's not surprising, right? But it when you actually think about it, but until you do think about it, maybe you don't realize that this is a role that librarians play and continue to play today. And you both brought up generative AI in different contexts, you know, the role that it's playing today, um, but also, you know, how library patrons are coming in and asking specific questions about this. And so I wonder, you know, we're several years into kind of this era or moment or or whatnot now. I wonder what the advent of generative AI has meant for libraries and library workers and both what it has meant for your own jobs and what you do, but also, you know, what you have been hearing from the people who come into the library in terms of how they are thinking about or what they're asking about this technology that is now being pushed on so many people.

SPEAKER_00 31:49

Yeah, I mean, one thing that comes up a lot in reference work is just people looking for things that don't exist because they heard about them through a chatbot. So whether that's like a fully made-up citation for a book or an article that's not real, or I had someone come in like a couple years ago who was on a scavenger hunt that someone had used AI to make, and they were looking, they were like, help me find this location in Bangor for this scavenger hunt. And I was like, that doesn't exist. That's you're never gonna find it because it's not real. You know, we've switched all of our search engines on our public computers away from Google so that we can have something that doesn't have AI overviews on it, partially because staff were spending a lot of time having to explain to patrons, no, no, no, don't look at that, scroll down, what we actually want is down here. It's motivated people to be searching for information that's not real, which is really challenging in a library environment. But again, I like to think that that provides an opportunity to start those conversations with patrons.

SPEAKER_01 32:53

Yeah, we actually conducted a survey in LFP at the end of last year where we asked library workers exactly this question: what is the impact of generative AI on your day-to-day work, on your patrons? Um, one of the biggest responses that, and we're we're actually we're about to publish it, it'll probably be published maybe by the time this episode is out. So we learned a lot of really interesting stuff, and one big thing was exactly what Hannah is saying that the influx of patrons who are getting generated fake um citations and books and other material that then the librarian has to like figure out the, you know, the most sort of like compassionate way to say, um, actually, that's totally fake, and it, you know, this is how this thing works. And it is a learning opportunity for sure, but it's also such a huge time suck and time waster. Another thing that we learn from this survey is just how many of our patrons are responding to this environment with a lot of alarm and confusion. There's a lot of concern about fraud and scams. It was already a major concern. I'm actually teaching a class next week for a library outside of Boston where I'm just going to be focusing on AI scams and how to identify them and the kinds of scams that, you know, the scam environment was already a growth, maybe the growth industry. And here's how it's been enhanced with generative AI. But another big thing that we heard in this survey is that, you know, just like a lot of workers in many other industries, that there is a divide between the rank and file, who are you pretty adamantly against adopting Gen AI tools, and the administration that's like, make AI part of your workflow, make it a deliverable, it doesn't matter what you do, we just can't get left behind, blah, blah, blah, FOMO, blah, blah, blah, efficiency. And so something that a way that we've responded in LFP is we love to offer people opportunities for malicious compliance. And so a lot of our trainings, I'll actually share with you, um, we have a whole set of critical AI literacy trainings. Some of them really mirror what Hannah is doing in Maine, but basically, like, okay, your job is saying that you now have to make AI part of it. Great. How about you make a critical AI class be whatever the deliverable is? And so I'm dropping that link for you in the in the chat there. People can get us to come to their library and offer these workshops for them if they want.

SPEAKER_02 35:25

Fantastic, fantastic. And I I wanted to ask about that specific last question a bit more, right? Because we've talked a bit about what that has meant for patrons and how patrons are responding to it. But has the advent of generative AI been used as a threat to the jobs and to the professions of library workers in the way that we've seen in some other industries, or have they been kind of insulated from that to this point? What has the effect been in that way?

SPEAKER_01 35:54

Oh, undoubtedly. I mean, it's the same exact rhetoric, it's the same, you know, tech industry talking points and PR bullshit. And I think that libraries are maybe even in a way sort of uniquely vulnerable to this nonsense for a few reasons. One, because we've been hearing for the last 30, even 40 years about our obsolescence, you know, that like nobody uses libraries anymore. We have the internet now, we have all these technology tools, we don't need them, even though the numbers of people coming in our buildings and using our services and even checking out print books still, because as Hannah said, print books are important, people read books. Our reality does not comport with what our administration says and what our vendors say. And so a lot of our vendors are pushing this kind of slop, even things like, God, you know, at the, we just, you know, there was the American Library Association conference that happened just a few weeks ago. One of our vendors is peddling like this uncanny valley librarian AI avatar that that was giving slop answers. And everyone, everybody who walked by it, all I heard were expletives being hurled at this like stupid AI avatar thing. Um, but yeah, we're, I think we're we're uniquely vulnerable to it because of the myths of our obsolescence, and I think because also we have been in sort of in part because of that um obsolescence myth, and because of the 40, 50 year defunding of the public sector that we've been forced to do more with less for years and years and years now. And so part of the myth that is very attractive to people in power in the library world is like, oh, well, we can we can do all those things that we don't have the money for if we just have this technology tool. And so there's quite a lot of fear that was expressed in this survey of ours from members of the labor force, from rank and file workers who are like, I know this thing can't do my job, but I'm still afraid that my boss is gonna tell me, is gonna take my job away in favor of this thing or tell me that I need to adopt this thing because I won't have a job otherwise.

SPEAKER_02 38:11

Yeah, it's really not a surprise to hear that, right? Especially where we know that there has been so much pressure on library budgets for such a long period of time. You know, it's so easy to cut libraries. I often say to people that like, if libraries didn't exist today, the idea of like creating this public institution would just be like unthinkable in the political environment that we live in now, right? Which is part of the reason why it's so important to protect and preserve and you know to fund them even more, right? Because if we lose them, we're probably not gonna get them back with the kind of you know leadership that we have. Uh Santa, I see you nodding your head there.

SPEAKER_00 38:47

Yeah, well, I think that's true. And I also like to point out that it's not just libraries, like libraries also suffer when other public institutions are defunded. Other institutions that would be our allies that would be also helping meet needs in our communities, when those go away or they don't have the resources to meet the need, we're still open and people come to us. So I think libraries have taken on, you know, we're happy to serve the community. Like, I want to help whoever comes into the building with whatever their information needs are. But it's really tough when like there used to be more places you could point people to say, hey, you know, you're having a mental health crisis, here's some resources you can go to. Um now it's like, well, here's a hotline you can call, and then you just watch them get on a computer and talk to ChatGPT about it. And that's like very concerning for me when I see patrons in my community already in crisis, you know, with untreated mental health problems. Uh, you know, it's yeah, it it's part of libraries are part of a network of social support that should all be robustly funded and working together to serve the community so that we can all focus on what we're best at. But when all of those other institutions start to fall away, libraries are left trying to hold the community kind of more on our own.

SPEAKER_02 40:06

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I remember reading articles about Canadian libraries increasingly having social workers on staff, as you say, to address those needs that are not being met with other institutions and programs that should be there to provide that, but now they're having to turn to the libraries. Um, you know, you were mentioning mentioning the funding issues, and this is kind of related to technology because you've both mentioned print books a few times. You know, I I love print books. I used to read a lot of ebooks and in the past number of years have just really gone back to print. But I feel like one thing that people don't realize is the cost of ebooks because of how you know the licensing and things like that are so much different than than print books for libraries. Um and even like the streaming services that are increasingly available through through libraries as well. Can you talk a bit about how the shift to digital ends up costing libraries a lot more money in ways that patrons might not realize by lending books in that way and those sorts of things?

SPEAKER_00 41:02

Yeah, patrons are shocked when I tell them that ebooks are often more expensive for us to loan them than print books. Because they're like, it shouldn't be more expensive. You don't even have to like ship a physical book and put stickers on it. And I'm like, oh yeah, but we don't own these books. We only rent the right to loan them to you. It's a nightmare. The ebook landscape is it's not a great model for libraries. It's not a great model for patrons, it's only a good model for vendors.

SPEAKER_01 41:28

The whole reason that libraries are able to exist in their form is because of the doctrine of the right of first sale, right? That if you purchase a book, it's your you get to lend that book however you want. But you know, as we move to electronic digital resources, the vendors, these you know, huge publishers, an increasingly consolidated publishing environment, not just in the sort of like um, you know, we think of like the big six publishers that are producing, you know, most of like, you know, the New York Times bestsellers and fiction and all that sort of stuff, but there's been enormous publishing consolidation in the academic world, as well as a lot of these publishing companies being bought by either private equity or um consolidated into like larger firms run by data analytics companies or whatever. So now they have not only are they these behemoths that can exert their power in a totally different way, but they also have a totally different business model. And so, yeah, that that now they're they're interested in extracting as much rent as possible from libraries. Um, we've been fighting them on these issues for years. One of our um partner organizations that works in this space is an org called Library Futures. They're doing really great work on trying to demand better digital rights for e-resources in libraries. But yeah, I mean, this is just one of the one of the many power dynamics that we have to contend with with our shrinking budgets, with a shrinking um public sector, and the increasing attendance social crises that go with that, that more and more people are in need. And we want to offer people the resources, um, the materials that are important for them, and then we have all this to contend with. And that doesn't even get into like, you know, on a lot of our e-resources vendors, we've found like literal Nazi propaganda. You know, they're making algorithmic decisions about materials purchasing, you know, they're doing things, they're they're recreating the slop environment that you see on the open internet. And so, you know, your librarian, she's not okay. Who among us is okay? But, you know, your librarian is not okay.

SPEAKER_02 43:52

This is true. G can I ask you though, on that point, like, does the the cost of lending these digital goods does it It becomes so high at a certain point that it affects libraries' ability to like fund and deliver other kinds of services because the the kind of uh percentage of the budget that has to go to you know these licensing agreements becomes so big that it that it starts to kind of crowd out other things. Is that a problem?

SPEAKER_01 44:19

Oh, undoubtedly. Yeah. I mean, you know, and we're talking about like some of the models are about, you know, our cost per per lending models. You know, everybody loves Canopy. There's great movies and stuff on Canopy, but Canopy is a cost per lending model. So libraries have to put a cap on it. If there's a great demand, we want to meet our patrons' needs, yeah, the money has to come from somewhere. Um, and you know, something else that um folks should appreciate is that it's not only that the that there's this great disparity in terms of you know the pricing of electronic resources versus print, but the prices go up every year. And so there's just even greater levels of extraction. So what happens in a lot of libraries, especially academic libraries, is that then, you know, when it comes time to renew database contracts, um, you know, they have to decide between uh which ones they're gonna purchase and which ones are not. And what usually suffers are the smaller, if there's any more sort of independent or like not your sort of big name databases or publishing houses, that's part of who gets cut first for sure.

SPEAKER_00 45:30

And the other thing is the staying power of ebooks, right? So, like with a print book, you buy it once, you loan it as many times as you can until it falls apart and you have to buy a new copy. And that can be a lot of loans. I mean, it can be a small number of loans if it's a really popular graphic novel that falls apart. But with ebooks and audiobooks, you know, in this digital environment, a lot of the lending models are metered. So it's like after a certain amount of time or after a certain number of loans, that title disappears from your collection. And you have to buy the right to lend it again. So it's kind of taking power and decision making away from library workers who normally decide, okay, this book hasn't gone out in a long time. We're gonna take it off the shelf to make room for something new. And we get to make those decisions about how to build our collection and actually grow it and shape it over time. And instead, it's like, well, 10 people have checked that out. Is it, do we think we're gonna get another 10 checkouts out of it? Or we'd love to still have it on the shelf. It just makes it really hard to like build your collection into something that provides you know a greater depth of variety for patrons.

SPEAKER_02 46:39

That that makes a lot of sense. There was a big discussion just recently because PlayStation announced it wasn't going to create physical game discs anymore starting in 28, I think it is. And you know, there was a lot of anger about that, and I completely agree there should be like physical games. But part of me was like, can we use this moment to like finally take on how the tech companies and entertainment companies have like redefined digital products around licensing rather than ownership to address the problems that libraries have, but also that regular consumers have when they're they think they're buying digital goods, but actually they're just getting a license to something that can be revoked based on the terms of one of these massive companies, right? And I wish that some politicians were paying attention to this, like seriously.

SPEAKER_00 47:21

And if they could get people to also release DVDs of these, you know, born streaming movies and TV shows that my patrons keep asking for, I would appreciate that too.

SPEAKER_02 47:32

I'm sure. I'm sure. Um, yeah, I I was interested in, as I was hearing you talk about some of these issues, you know, there are often proposals for, you know, what digital technology could be in a better world. And I feel like often some of these proposals have to do with librarians. You know, what if there was like a search engine that was more kind of curated by librarians rather than by Google or some big corporation or you know, just filled with AI or something like that? I I wonder what you as librarians kind of make of these proposals of librarians kind of being central to better technology.

SPEAKER_01 48:10

Well, on the one hand, yes, I agree that they should, you know, that we should have more power, but I find that a lot of these proposals never come with a check. Like, I see this kind of stuff all the time, right? We need a thousand librarians out there fighting misinfo. And it's like, yeah, we're we're doing that actually. We're doing that on um on public sector salaries um with looming budget cuts and you know all these problems that we have already uh shared with you, and also uh the the bathroom toilet is clogged. Um and that's your job too. And so, you know, I I do while I think that um it's great when the public or pundits or journalists or whoever recognize that libraries have an ethical obligation to information and the public good, and that we would certainly like handle this world a lot differently. But there are ways to get us paid for that. And, you know, for all those words that you wrote down in the paper, you could uh you could do some more advocacy to your local budget or wherever and try to get some of that money um in our pockets.

SPEAKER_00 49:24

Yeah, and I think you know, technology is important and can be great. And like people come use our public computers every day, people use the Wi-Fi every day. We put in a public phone that's been incredibly popular because not everybody has their own phone, right? And people need to make calls. It's important. And I think that, like, sure, I hey, call me. Like, I would love to be a voice on helping to guide the direction of new technology. But I also think that there's a lot of people out there who believe that like all our problems can be solved by our technology. And I just don't think that's true. I think our problems can only be solved by people. And what I have found, you know, on the day-to-day on the ground working with patrons is like people don't want to learn digital literacy from an app. People want a human being who's kind and compassionate, who's gonna sit with them and explain it to them in a way that they can understand and uh and in a way that makes them comfortable. A lot of people who are trying to learn technology skills, it's very emotional. Like it's a fraught process. People come in and, you know, it's like, well, my husband used to do all of this and he passed away, and now I need to learn how to do this. That makes everything you're gonna teach that person hit really different, right? And they don't want to sit in front of a cold, heartless chat bot and be told, you know, tap here, tap here to learn how to do this thing. It's about building relationships with people, it's about building trust with people. And I think the only way to do it is to have human beings engaging with it.

SPEAKER_02 50:56

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And you know, the chatbot might give a false sense of empathy. You never, you never know, uh, to help itself, you know, uh, uh, or to rather the company that that is running it, of course. Um, I was wondering as well, I have a few final questions before before we wrap up. I've noticed a lot of Luddite imagery associated with both of your work. Of course, you know, Hannah in your background is an art piece of Ned Ludd. And of course, Allison, you know, you've showed me a Luddite hat and some tote bags at the Luddites. What do the Luddites mean as you for you as librarians and the work that you're doing?

SPEAKER_00 51:29

I've called myself a millennial Luddite since like way, way before I read Brian Merchant's book. Um, and then, you know, learning more about like what the Luddites were actually standing for and fighting against has really made me embrace the term even more. And my patrons call themselves Luddites all the time, and they often do it derogatorily. They'll say, I know I should know how to do this, but I'm such a Luddite, or I just hate this stuff, I'm such a Luddite. And I say, Great, hey, do you want to know about what the Luddites were up to? Because they were not just people who were afraid of technology or people who hated change, right? They had reasons, and you have reasons. And let's talk about your reasons and how we want to proceed to get you to be able to do the stuff you want to do in life, but not be trading away your values in the process. So I I totally rally people around their self-described bloodism all the time.

SPEAKER_02 52:23

I love that. And are you regularly lending out Brian's book in that case to help people get more informed of the blood?

SPEAKER_00 52:28

It might be on our staff picks table.

SPEAKER_02 52:31

I'm sure. I'm sure. Allison, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 52:34

Everything, you know, that Hannah said, um, I think also that having, you know, I I spent all my time thinking about like, how do we do political education at a scale? How do we make how do libraries engage in mass politics? How do we do critical technology as a mass political movement, especially considering all the stuff that Hannah just said about how emotional and personal and frightening a lot of these things can be. And I think that's something, something I really appreciate about Brian Merchant using this term is I think he gets this that if you have a signifier, a thing that you can all identify with, and you see someone else, I mean, that's why we put it on the freaking hat and email me if you want a hat. But we need to connect with other people who also have these critiques and and also want to engage in the world a little differently. And so I I guess, you know, I love the history and I love, of course, the book. And Brian, if you're listening, I already told you this, but librarians love your book. We're all huge fans. But I think that that part about having something that we can, you know, it's a conversation piece, it's a way to find out where other people stand. You know, I wear my Luddite hat or I wear my LFP Luddite tote bag, and other LFP members talk about this all the time. Like, we love to share stories of like who stopped us in public in the grocery store or in the post office or wherever to say, oh my God, I'm a Luddite too. And so I think there's something really meaningful there.

SPEAKER_02 54:08

I love that. That's so fantastic. Um, you know, I wanted to ask you both. Obviously, I am not the most well-informed person about libraries and what library workers are facing and how the technologies affect library workers. So as we close off our conversation, you know, is there anything that I didn't ask you about that you think that is important for people to understand about libraries or the way that librarians are engaging with technology today? And what can people do to support their local libraries and library workers?

SPEAKER_00 54:39

I mean, the best way to support your local library is to use your local library. You know, go in, see what they have going on. I think a lot of people are in your same boat, Paris, that like they don't necessarily go to the library regularly. They don't necessarily know that, like, oh, they also lend a radon detector and they also teach a class about this. And oh, they have a knitting group, but I have been feeling kind of lonely on Tuesday nights. I would like to meet some people and knit with them. So I, you know, I think go to the library, see what they have going on, talk to other people there. One of the most beautiful things about working in a public library is watching people who would never otherwise meet or interact get the opportunity to cross paths and see what happens. Um, so you know, go out in the world, go use your library. Also, of course, like support your library financially. If there is a vote in your town about funding for your library, if there are, you know, people out there who are advocating for more funding or less funding, like pay attention to what's going on and support your library financially because we can't do any of this if we're not getting paid. That's what I would say to folks. And if you'd like to see your library offering some of these types of critical digital literacy classes, like tell your librarians that. Your librarians are here to serve you and the rest of your community. And just like me, if they hear a lot of demand for something that they're not already doing, they'll probably try to find a way to do it, right?

SPEAKER_01 56:07

Anyone listening to this, it's as easy as possible. If you don't have a library card, go and get one. And exactly what Hannah said, like if you go to your library right now or this weekend or whenever, and you just go up to the librarian and you're like, hey, haven't been here in a while. Can you just tell me about some of the stuff you have? Not only will you make their day, but you will make your own day because you will find out all these things. The list that Hannah mentioned goes on. They've got museum passes, some of them give out seeds, there's programming for all ages, there's like, you know, adult summer reading with cute prizes. Like libraries have all kinds of stuff. And if there's something that you want to see and it's not there, they're literally waiting for you to tell them. And I think that folks who want to get a little bit more deeply engaged, um, I want to plug a project called Libraries for the People, which is a leftist library project that is organizing people to get on the board or the friends' associations of their libraries. So recognizing that uh there is a lot of local power to be gained by getting seats at the at these tables. Libraries FTP has done amazing work on like mapping out the entire environment of like appointed boards versus elected boards. They do trainings to help people to run for their board, or even if that's like too much of a commitment, they also have a lot of materials for like showing up at your library board meeting, talking points to you know, to support things. We haven't even talked at all about the environment of um right-wing fascist censorship that libraries have been facing for the last 10 years or so. And a lot of that is being played out at the board level. And so if you get involved with your board, you can help defend your community in some of these ways. For librarians who might be listening to this or people who would love to see their libraries offering some of these materials, please share Library Freedom Project's resources. We're on libraryfreedom.org, our resource pages slash resources. We also offer trainings. Um, we'll come out to your library and do a training. We can we can do virtual stuff for librarians, we do stuff for patrons too. And so we definitely want to support you if you want to get engaged in this work.

SPEAKER_00 58:28

Yeah, one more plug for LFP's resources from me, an On the Ground Librarian, because they, you know, they've got everything from like just set it and forget it, like handout that you print out and put in a stack near the public computers to multi-week intensive training programs. Like anywhere you want to fall on that spectrum, it's a great way to start dipping your toe into providing some of these services for patrons.

SPEAKER_01 58:52

If you want Hannah's, some of Hannah's amazing avoiding AI worksheets, we've got them on the LFP website to like help you take it off Gmail or take it off Microsoft Office or whatever your platform of choice is.

SPEAKER_02 59:07

I love that. That's so fantastic. And, you know, there's so many great resources there. And I feel like through this conversation, you've only like reinforced to me, and I'm sure the listeners as well, of what like essential community spaces and resources libraries are and why they need to be supported and protected and enhanced, right? Because they do so many important things in our communities, um, and will continue to do so. And and if they have more resources, that just means even more benefits for the public, right? Um, so I I thank you both so much for taking the time to come on the show to talk to us about everything that you're doing. Um, this has been fantastic. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 59:44

Thank you so much, Paris.

SPEAKER_02 59:47

Hannah Cyrus is a digital media librarian at the Bangor Public Library, and Alison McCrina is the executive director of the Library Freedom Project. Tech Won't Save Us is made in partnership with The Nation magazine and is hosted by me, Paris Marks. Production is by Kyla Houston. Tech Won's Save Us relies on the support of listeners like you to keep providing critical perspectives on the tech industry. You can join hundreds of other supporters by going to patreon.com slash tech won't save us and making a pledge of your own. Thanks for listening. Make sure to come back next week.