The HardiBlog

As academic publishers continue to consolidate power through diverse mergers and acquisitions, librarians need to be better informed about our role in facilitating “academic freedom”.   How are Scopus, ScienceDirect, LexisNexis, Mendeley, SciVal, SSRN, Pure, and Elsevier related? They’re a few of the vast holdings of RELX, a multi-national conglomerate with £3 billion in profit in 2023 ( RELX 2023 Results ). Why does this matter? In a recent article titled “ Elsevier’s Stranglehold on Academia: How Publishers Get Rich Off Our Data ”, Christien Boomsma starts by taking us through a day in the life of an academic, listing some of the touchpoints where they and their work interact with RELX products. Boomsma is a journalist and librarian at the University of Groningen, so while “UG” in the article refers to “University of Groningen”, staff and students at the University of Galway are in the same position. Whenever we find an article through Scopus, add references to Mendeley, deposit...

  A post by Michelle Breen for the AI and Libraries seminar University of Galway, November 2024 A walk through any of our libraries observing student behaviours as they work on assignments or a chat to any students currently in third level will reveal the myriad GenAI tools that students are using for their academic work. A 2024 survey by Campus Technology on the use of GenAI by University students found that 86% of them are using GenAI (Kelly 2024). Even with the high costs associated with being a university student, some pay monthly fees for the premium versions of these tools, such is their value to them in their academic work. GenAI use by students in higher education is a hot topic. Godsk and Elving in their 2024 work found that many educators they surveyed shared concerns about the transparency, accountability, and reliability of ChatGPT answers and also confirmed that they are worried about permissible use and cheating . An IEEE study (Laato et al . 2023) examined a Bachel...

AI promises to change how we do work, including many aspects of how third-level institutions function. This includes research  — and research support. In this blog post, Oksana  Dereza , author of this guide to  AI for Research , delves a bit deeper into demystifying AI, offering ideas on how to support and what to say to the slightly-to-somewhat-more advanced AI user. Oksana is Digital Library Developer at University of Galway Library.  Since the release of ChatGPT, interest in AI has surged like never before. Businesses, researchers, and government bodies are diving head-first into the possibilities AI offers, eager not to miss out on what some believe is the next big technological revolution. This trend has grown so strong that many companies are now rebranding their software as “AI” solutions — a trend often called “AI washing.” But what exactly is AI, and is it truly the answer to all the world's problems?   Image source:  https://www.cortical.io/...