AI in Virginia Public Libraries

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a hot topic these days, to say the least, and it seems that there are new developments happening weekly if not daily in the field. It can be a real challenge to keep up with what is going on and to separate reality from hype.

The Library of Virginia has been offering training for public library staff around the Commonwealth to help them better understand what the current state of the field is, and how to best help public library users who are coming in with questions about AI’s safety, ethics, environmental impacts, and more. These questions often reflect a high level of concern about the effects of the development and use of AI tools.

A spring 2026 poll by YouGov looked at attitudes toward AI in the US. Results show significant concerns about the impact of AI across demographic categories. Poll data indicate that 71% of Americans think that AI development is moving too fast, and that 63% of respondents feel that it is “unlikely that AI will create economic gains that benefit everyone.” The poll also reports that 51% of Americans are “pessimistic about the long-term impact of AI on society.”¹

In August of 2025, the Library of Virginia surveyed public library directors and staff in Virginia to get a sense of AI use in library work and attitudes about AI in general. Those surveys reflected similar patterns to national surveys like the YouGov survey cited above. Of the 331 library staff in Virginia who responded to the survey, only 11% indicated that they were excited about AI in library work, whereas 16% reported feeling indifferent, and 28% of staff reported feeling anxious. About 20% of respondents reported feeling a mix of excitement, anxiety, and indifference.

Concerns about library AI use among library staff are similar to those of the general public, focusing on ethical issues, privacy and security, unreimbursed use of intellectual property, and bias in the AI algorithms. There was also some concern about job loss in the library profession, but that issue ranked lower than the ones mentioned above. Concerns in the “Other” category generally focused on the environmental issues around AI use, including water use and the impact of data center construction on local communities.

The Library of Virginia’s survey indicated that AI use in public libraries in Virginia is primarily at the individual level, with some library staff using AI in parts of their work, and most not using AI in any formal way. Those library staff who reported using AI in their work were primarily using Large Language Model (LLM) chatbots (ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Copilot, and Google Gemini) that are commonly used for drafting text based on user prompts. This makes sense as responses to the survey question about what AI is being used for mostly involved writing projects, ranging from policy development and strategic planning to grant writing and marketing.

There appears to be very little adoption of AI at a system-wide level in public libraries either in Virginia or the US, though that is changing as library systems implement AI policies to outline how and when staff can use AI and then begin exploring using AI in a more systematic way.

For instance, in 2025, the Virginia Beach Public Library debuted an AI-powered chatbot to answer user queries on the library website. The chatbot was developed collaboratively by library staff, City IT staff, and library users, and is based on library policy and procedural documents and information about library services (hours, locations, etc.). The chatbot is reported to have had over 110,000 monthly engagements so far, and it is freeing up staff time for more involved questions. The success of the project has led to development of a city-wide chat tool launched in early 2026 for community members accessing any Virginia Beach government webpage.²

As library vendors begin to explore AI opportunities, public libraries are also seeing AI brought into resources that they are licensing, including resources available to all Virginia public libraries through the Library of Virginia’s Find It Virginia collection. In EBSCO’s Explora tool, users can turn on a natural language search option just under the search bar. Doing so will enable Explora’s AI tool that converts a natural language search like, “What are the impacts of climate change on Virginia,” to a much more structured Boolean search, ((climate change OR global warming) AND (Virginia OR Virginia state) AND (impact OR effect OR consequence)), without the user having to know Boolean logic. As seen in the images below, using Natural Language Search returned more results for that search, and those results were more relevant to the initial inquiry.

For library users new to research databases or who are not familiar with more advanced searching strategies, AI tools like EBSCO’s natural language search option can be valuable. As people increasingly use tools like Co-Pilot, Gemini, and ChatGPT for research, they are becoming used to simply putting in their query as a sentence. Offering this option in EBSCO’s research tools allows even novice researchers to find the most relevant materials quickly.³

There are important considerations in any adoption of artificial intelligence tools for professional or personal use. Foremost among these is ensuring that the use does not put personal or organizational data at risk. It is essential to remember not to share any sensitive personal data with an AI tool including things like health or financial information or other data that you would not want someone else to have access to. Some AI tools allow users the option to not have their data used to train the model, though it is not always easy to find the controls to do this. This may add a level of security for communications with the tool, but users should still be wary of providing personal information. Additionally, the paid versions of AI tools generally offer a higher level of control over data.

AI users should also be alert to the potential for AI tools to provide misinformation. AI models can share any biases that are present in the data that they are trained on, so while outright falsehoods (sometimes referred to as “hallucinations”) may be less common than they were in the early days of AI chat tools, the potential for incorrect information is still there. Treat AI as a tool, not as a substitute for thinking for yourself. Always verify the results that you see. As an example, librarians at the Library of Virginia report receiving an increasing number of email reference queries that appear to be generated by researchers using AI chat tools. These questions often include citations to nonexistent materials, including primary source historical documents, that AI has indicated are held by the Library, creating a time-consuming and ultimately fruitless search process for the librarians. As Sarah Falls, Chief of Researcher Engagement at the Library of Virginia notes in a Scientific American article on AI misinformation, “For our staff, it is much harder to prove that a unique record doesn’t exist.”⁴

Also, be aware that AI tools tend to offer responses that will keep you using them, so the responses to queries will often seem to flatter or default to agreement with your positions. This can be a problem if it clouds personal judgement or simply confirms our own thinking. Dr. Mathew Nour is quoted in the New York Times as saying “The A.I. isn’t actually your friend or confidant, … It’s sophisticated software mimicking human interaction patterns.”⁵ Keep that in mind when interacting with an AI tool.

Your local public library can be an excellent place to find out more about AI technology. From books and articles in the collection to presentations about various aspects of AI from technology professionals (both AI enthusiasts and AI skeptics), Virginia’s public libraries are helping to keep their communities informed and educated about this rapidly developing technology. Librarians can help you better understand:

• When it might be appropriate to use AI and when not
• What AI can and can’t do
• What AI tools there are and how to take the best advantage of those tools
• How those AI tools can be used safely and securely

Finally, one of the real challenges with AI is how rapidly the field is changing. The Library of Virginia has been working to help public library staff keep up with the seemingly daily changes in the AI landscape, and we have found some resources that might be of interest to others who want to keep tabs on the AI world. Here are some websites, newsletters, and blogs that provide insights into AI and its impact on our culture and society:

• 404 Media
  1. A “journalist-founded digital media company exploring the ways technology is shaping–and is shaped by–our world.”
• AI – Ars Technica
  1. A “source for technology news, tech policy analysis, breakdowns of the latest scientific advancements, gadget reviews, software, hardware, and nearly everything else found in between layers of silicon.”
• Artificial Intelligence | The Verge
  1. Covers “technology and how it makes us feel. …. [offering] everything from breaking news to reviews to award-winning features and investigations.”
• Axios AI+
  1. “Scoops on the AI revolution and transformative tech”
• CollaborAItion
  1. “Bringing the Human to Human-AI Interaction.” Explores the “intersections between artificial intelligence, libraries, education, archives, and the workplace.”
• The Conversation AI newsletter
  1. A weekly newsletter of curated articles on AI every Friday. “All articles are written by academic experts from around the world and edited by our team of science and technology editors.”
• Mimir’s Well | Mark McNeilly
  1. AI-focused newsletter from a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor, includes news and discussion.
• One Useful Thing | Ethan Mollick
  1. “A research-based view on the implications of AI.”

Like any technology tool, AI has positive and negative aspects. As library staff around the country are exploring how AI can assist in their work, they are trying to do so within the structure of the professional values of librarianship—these include commitment to patron privacy, respect for intellectual property and copyright, and focus on serving a diverse community. The American Library Association’s draft document Guidance on the Use of Artificial Intelligence in Libraries lays out a framework for how librarians can best implement AI, or other technologies, around these values.

AI can offer libraries positive help with tasks such as generating ideas for programming, analyzing data, retrieving information, and creating services to support users, such as the Virginia Beach Public Library chatbot. At the same time, it can be easy for someone with good intentions to use an AI tool without fully understanding the potential for getting inaccurate information to make bad decisions based on that information. This is a particular danger when using AI to explore high-risk topics like health or legal issues, where acting on inaccurate information can have serious consequences.

AI can also be put to intentional misuse by individuals with bad intent to generate misinformation or malicious code and to target both individual users (scams) as well as organizations and countries. What is essential for anyone in this new world is to be aware of how AI operates within our society and how to ensure that if we are using AI tools, that we are using them safely and ethically. Your local public library can help you better understand how AI is making its way into our lives and how to keep yourself and your information secure.

Thanks to my colleagues at the Library of Virginia, Sonya Coleman, Becky Schneider, and Jessica Beavers, whose thoughtful comments and ideas have shaped my thinking about AI and this post.