The library used to be the central place for information for our community and about our community. Now, we are just a node in a larger network. This shift has been very challenging to us.
The quote about is from myself from over ten years ago from a keynote I gave called The Origin of the Future is in the Present.
We are — collectively — still grappling with the Internet, or as Naomi Alderman has put it, our third information crisis.
And while I believe libraries have done remarkable work in adapting almost every aspect of our profession in response, I want to bring attention to one particular development that I think we don’t articulate out loud because it exposes a weakness in our position: publishers don’t need academic libraries to reach faculty or students anymore.
I don’t think it is widely understood that we are still grappling with being displaced as the centralized source of academic research. Prior to January 2000, in the age of print, you had to go to the library to be able to access the breadth and depth of current and past research materials or for books that were out print. Government documents and court decisions published in reporters were also only found in libraries. While faculty input was important, it was librarians who chose what materials were included in the library.
But in the digital era, publishers do not need the library to communicate directly to faculty.
In the context of Law, we have legal publishers who have established student ambassador programs who bypass librarians themselves. These students host outreach events in the library with swag to give away, without any librarian involvement.
With this loss of our role as the last mile of research distribution and no longer holding the ability to strongly influence a degree of control over the access to research works, academic libraries have also lost some degree of leverage with publishers. Academic libraries can try to advocate on behalf of their institution with publishers and ask that they might behave better, but without leverage (or without a credible threat that we will cancel “essential titles” that are needed and dear to faculty), we don’t really hold much standing, as individual libraries.
What I have just said above is nothing new to scholarly communication librarians and those involved in supporting the infrastructure of open access publishing. Reforming academic publishing is a wicked problem.
Recently I was in conversation with a faculty member, and we were casually discussing the current state of peer review. She told me that a paper she had written about a particular technology was about to be published three years after it was first submitted. I shared that I was surprised but also not that surprised because I knew how difficult it was to find peer reviewers to do the un-credited labour of deeply reading and critiquing submitted papers. And said faculty member had a potential solution for the problem: we should pay reviewers a stipend.
What if libraries financially supported peer review instead of APC funds?
Curious, I searched google and instead of suggested websites, I got an answer.
I actually don’t want to get into the merits and the drawbacks of this particular idea in this post. I just wanted to provide an example that could make an expository transition to discuss how the internet now makes it next to impossible for anyone to avoid the outputs of large language models.
By acting as a free service the companies that provide GenAi are able to bypass the previous restrictive evaluation processes by which educational technology was selected for subscription by educational and library professionals.
As well by marketing themselves as a product for individuals, these technology companies bypass institutional processes that are in place to reduce security risks and to better ensure privacy. Conveniently for these technology companies, the “solution” to discourage individual employees from using untested and potentially “leaky” services like meeting transcription, is to provide readily available corporate GenAi transcription services throughout the organization.
That’s where we are in this moment: GenAi is ubiquitous and it exists as a constant temptation for students (and everyone else) to rely on it.
That is not to say that there cannot be spaces with gate-keepers.
I want to end this post with a recent essay that was strongly recommended and for good reason, called AI Killed the Take-Home Essay. COVID Killed Attendance. Now What? Reclaiming Learning in an Age of Distraction and Artificial Intelligence
In this essay, Steven Mintz describes how he, against his prior practice, has made classroom attendance mandatory and the place where students do regular reflective writing on assigned reading.
Active responsibility and public performance matter because they shift learning from private production to observable demonstration. I will no longer ask students to produce written work I cannot witness.
Instead, each student will be responsible for introducing a class session—presenting the core arguments of that day’s readings, identifying key tensions or problems, proposing questions for discussion.
They will take turns facilitating discussions, which means not merely participating but actively orchestrating the conversation: drawing out quiet voices, pressing superficial claims, connecting contributions, and synthesizing insights.
And they will deliver oral presentations on research topics of their choosing, then defend their findings against questions from classmates and from me.
This approach inverts the traditional relationship between student and instructor. I am no longer the sole authority responsible for making the class work. Students become co-creators of the learning environment, accountable not just to me but to each other.
Practice, peer review, coaching, and private study are necessary for exceptional public performance. This is something I was reminded of as I watched, in person, the 2025 Zuber Moot held at Windsor Law last week.
We can create space where students grow in confidence as they develop their own abilities as they gain new ways of understanding.
To the gates!
