AI use in the library and museum workplace: Ethical and linguistic perspectives

Understanding GLAM visitors and users has recently become a highly professionalised field. Cooperations, Cultural consultancies, and internal GLAM teams all compete to find new methods to analyse audiences in hopes of developing public engagement offerings. AI has played a substantial role in these workflows in recent years. But at what cost?

This talk will delineate the researcher’s recent ethnographic findings at their case study institution: Oxford University’s ‘Gardens, Libraries, and Museums’ (GLAM). Since September 2025 the University has provided GLAM staff with Chat GPT-5 and Gemini 2.5 licenses. Evaluation professionals at the GLAM Division have been exploring methods of using AI in data analysis. But how do they feel about integrating AI into their work? Is AI use effective? This talk will explore the capabilities and limitations of AI workplace integrations and report on interview findings where AI was used for a range of visitor language analysis tasks, such as using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) on comment cards.

Additionally, this talk will compare the findings from Oxford GLAM with the results of the researcher’s recent internship at the National Library of Scotland (NLS) conducting qualitative and quantitative research to inform the NLS’s AI policy for user services. Librarians are rightfully cautious about using AI for user interactions in reference services. How then can they proceed as ethical information professionals in the current AI landscape? This talk will ascertain key priorities for the future of AI use across GLAM institutions.

This is the latest talk in the Bodleian Bytes series, hosted by the Centre for Digital Scholarship at the Bodleian Libraries.

Speaker Biography

Elena Trowsdale is a third year Applied Linguistics collaborative PhD student between the Open University and Oxford University’s GLAM Division. She looks at how to analyse visitors in GLAM spaces, which has involved methodological experiments with GenAI alongside critical perspectives towards investigating how visitors discuss decolonial measures.

This summer, Elena completed a UKRI Policy Internship with the National Library of Scotland investigating AI and reference services. She is also on the teaching team for Oxford’s MSc in Digital Scholarship, and co-leads the UKIE DH ‘Digital Humanities Pedagogies’ CIG.

Elena Trowsdale

Bodleian Bytes

Bodleian Bytes is a series of online talks hosted by the Centre for Digital Scholarship at the Bodleian Libraries. The series engages with innovative national and international research in digital scholarship. It is a virtual space for discussions surrounding different tools and methodologies whilst also providing inspiration for future digital research.