Author: Jim O’Donnell, Arizona State University, United States

IFLA’s section for Academic and Research Libraries is proud to be organizing and hosting a satellite conference in Rotterdam, on the Friday and Saturday before WLIC 2023, on Inclusiveness through Openness. This satellite is a collaboration with Erasmus University Library,  Continuing and Professional Development and Workplace Learning (CPDWL),   Serials and other Continuing Resources,   Health and Biosciences Libraries,  IFLA Open Access Group,   Women, Information and Libraries,   Max Planck Digital Library – Open Access 2020 Initiative and The British Library.

Our assumption is that we are moving into a world in which open science and open access publishing are the rule not the exception, the norm not an experiment.  Ever since “open” became an ambition in academic libraries (one of our organizers has been an OA publisher since 1990!), we have believed and assumed that a critical benefit will be opening up science and scholarship to those who are disadvantaged in the world of high paywalls and closed systems.  The time has come to make sure the publishing and library worlds are ready to deliver on that promise.

Accordingly, this conference will start with our assumption and focus on the issues that arise and the steps that need to be taken in order to make a more open world a genuinely more inclusive world.  What mistakes must we avoid?  What strategies succeed?  What considerations do we need to keep “top of mind”?  Much of our focus will be on the global south as a region whose development and advancement will be critical to the health, prosperity, and sustainability of the human family in the coming decades.  A keynote speaker coming to Rotterdam from Zambia will set the tone and a rich variety of presentations by stakeholders and colleagues from many diverse places will frame the discussion.

The website for the satellite is here.  We will meet at Erasmus University in Rotterdam for a day and a half, August 18 and 19, with a full program but with time for what we hope will be lively and productive discussion.  The question we hope will be uppermost in participants’ minds will be, how can and should IFLA understand these issues and seek to make a difference?  What, in short, is our message from the satellite conference for all the colleagues joining WLIC and sharing in the work of IFLA?

Jim O’Donnell
University Librarian
Arizona State University, United States

 

 

Author: Marisa King, Secretary, ARL Section, IFLA, New Zealand

While reading through the latest country trends reports provided by Academic and Research Libraries (ARL) Section members from across the globe, three words come to mind: Open, open and open.

In fact, I can’t put it better than the writer of this abstract for ARL’s upcoming Satellite Conference:

Twenty years after the start of the open access movement, the scholarly communication ecosystem is rapidly evolving into an open paradigm, and we can easily imagine a not-so-distant future in which open scholarship is the norm.
(For more information on the conference, see https://www.eur.nl/en/library/ifla/inclusiveness-through-openness)

Every year, ARL’s twenty section committee members provide a summary of the most important issues and trends that are occupying the minds of academic and research librarians in their country. There is a wealth of diverse information contained within these reports and providing a “summary of the summaries”, as I am attempting to do in this blog, is a challenging but stimulating task.

Let’s start with transformative agreements, an important step towards a fully open access model in academic publishing.
Many examples of transformative agreements are referred to by ARL members in their reports. These agreements are often negotiated on behalf of many institutions by a national association. For example, the Canadian Research Knowledge Network, representing 81 research institutions, has been actively negotiating transformative agreements on behalf of members e.g. Sage. Other examples are evident in Finland, Germany, South Africa and Australia.
Much is also happening in the broader field of open scholarship. For example, the Association for College and Research Libraries in the US has set itself a strategic goal of supporting an “accelerated transition” to more open and equitable systems of scholarship, while national open scholarship policies and practical guidelines have been drafted in Finland (https://avointiede.fi/en/policies). Much is also happening to support open scholarship at a grassroots level. Open science and open research toolkits have been created in Estonia and Australia; library users in Bangladesh are being educated about the benefits of using open access resources; and workshops, conferences and symposiums supporting the adoption of open science are ongoing at both an institutional and national level in Botswana.

The concept of open and FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) data is also receiving its share of attention. In Denmark, the rollout of institutional policies and support for data stewardship and research data management is a major trend. And various research data services have been rolled out in Hong Kong’s academic libraries, supported by universities.

Now, let’s take a step away from the “open” paradigm to consider some of the other issues and initiatives that are top of mind for the world’s academic and research librarians.

On the technology front, moves are underway in Denmark, Hong Kong and Estonia to develop a single common library system to unite academic and research libraries across countries. In some cases, new technologies also feature in staff development programmes; librarians in Botswana, for example, are learning the finer points of data wrangling in Open Refine, while topics like cybersecurity and the GDPR (the EU’s new data protection law) are on the staff development menu in Estonia.

Moves are also afoot in some countries to develop more inclusive library services. In New Zealand, for example, there is a focus on providing library services that are relevant to indigenous (Māori) students, and working towards the broader goal of decolonising libraries and communities.

Among these many new developments, the usual suspects of managing costs, providing effective leadership, managing physical spaces effectively, building staff capacity, and promoting digital and information literacy also feature in the list of country trends provided by ARL members.

And remember digitisation? The aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany has seen greatly increased digitisation in academic libraries, along with more virtual consulting and online seminars for library users. And France’s Bibliothèque Nationale plans to set up new premises in the city of Amiens in northern France to develop a National Newspapers Repository providing storage, restoration and digitization capacity, along with on-site services.

Whatever conclusions we may try to draw from these many and diverse trends, one thing is for sure. It’s an exciting but challenging time to work in the academic and research libraries sector.

Marisa King
Secretary
ARL Section, IFLA

Author: Lily Y. Ko, Head, Learning Services, The Chinese University of Hong Kong Library, Hong Kong SAR, The People’s Republic of China

The United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is a universal plan of action for equality, prosperity, peace and partnership. It contains 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets. I learnt about the UN 2030 Agenda and the SDGs in an IFLA workshop.

IFLA, HKLA and MLIMA Workshop: Libraries, Development and Implementation of the UN2030 Agenda (14-15 May 2018)

As part of the IFLA’s International Advocacy Programme (IAP), Hong Kong Library Association (HKLA) and the Macao Library & Information Management Association (MLIMA) hosted the workshop for local librarians to learn about how the libraries and their associations can play in contributing to the United Nations Agenda 2030 and its seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

As a council member of HKLA, I assisted in organizing and also actively participated in the two-day workshop with 23 other library professionals from academic, public, school and special library sectors. Ms. Ingrid Bon from the ILFA Headquarters facilitated the workshop and introduced the IFLA advocacy toolkit to the participants. Among the 17 Goals, the participants discussed and rated the most important ones according to the local context:

Top 1: Climate Action (SDG 13)

Top 2: Quality Education (SDG 4)

Top 3: Good Health and Well-Being (SDG 3)

Top 4: No Poverty (SDG 1)

Top 5: Responsible Consumption and Production (SDG 12)

After attending the two-day workshop, I had a better understanding of the SDGs. Most importantly, I realized that as a librarian, I was able to contribute to the development and implementation of the UN2030 Agenda and the SDGs through our daily work.

 CUHK Library and SDGs (2018-2022)

Returning to the workplace, my colleagues and I have been promoting the SDGs. The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) Library has been supporting the development of SDGs in the university. Major initiatives include:

Climate Action (SDG 13)

• CUHK Library Strategic Plan 2021-2025 was launched in 2021. One of the objectives is “Play our part in helping the University achieve its goal of carbon neutrality by 2038.” The Library has been reviewing the electricity consumption of different buildings, implementing energy saving practices.
• Research Cafe aims at facilitating cross-disciplinary research ideas exchange by postgraduate students. A series of Research Cafes on Carbon Neutrality has been oganizing to increase the awareness of the topic among students and staff.

Research Cafe on Carbon Neutrality (2) Climate Science was held inside the CUHK Library on Sep 29, 2022.
Some participants joined the discussion in-person and some joined online.

 

Quality Education (SDG 4)

• Reading Promotion. CUHK Library has set up the Good Reads Corner at the main library and Library’s Pick at its branch libraries to promote reading culture on campus. The Library has also collaborated with other departments and units to organize reading activities. During the pandemic, the Library has invited teaching staff from different faculty to conduct online books talks to students and staff.
• Digital and Information Literacy as life-long skills. CUHK Library has been actively conducting workshops and developing self-learning materials to students. Different series of workshops include: Academic Honesty Series, Assignment Season Series, Research Skills Workshops Series, E-Resources Workshops, Open Access: OA Publishing Pilot @CUHK, Digital Scholarship and Research Data Workshops and Maker Skills Series.

Good Health and Well-Being (SDG 3)

• LibGuide on Positive Psychology. CUHK Library has been introducing available resources on good health and well-being to students.
• Dog Visits During Examination. CUHK Library has been working with the Office of Student Affairs to organize pets’ visits to the main and branch libraries. Students can take a break and relax a while from the tight schedule of the examinations.

Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure (SDG 9)

• Digital Scholarship Lab is a technology-rich space to showcase digital scholarship research and to provide venue support to research meetings, seminars, workshops conferences and instructional classes. The Digital Scholarship Team also offers consultation and workshops to digital scholarship tools and methods, software, data visualisation, etc.
• Learning Garden and MakerSpace is a creative learning space with high-performance multimedia workstations, Creative Media Studio, VR CAVE and virtual reality equipment, 3D printers and scanners, laser cutter and UV printer. It aims to foster cross-disciplinary collaboration among CUHK students and staff. Consultation and workshops on digital fabrication, 3D modelling, image editing have been offering.

 

• Learning Garden and MakerSpace@CUHK Library

IFLA ARL Webinar Series: The Call To Action – Academic Libraries Responses to the SDGs (2 November 2022)

The IFLA Academic and Research Libraries (ARL) Section Standing Committee hosted a webinar related to the SDGs and the academic and research libraries.

The webinar recording is available here: IFLA ARL Webinar Series: The call to action – Academic libraries responses to the SDGs

 

Moving Forward

The IFLA IAP programme has inspired me to support the UN2030 Agenda and SDGs in my working library. Let’s stay tuned for more IFLA news and updates on SDGs. Let’s work together to contribute more to the UN2030 Agenda.

 

References:

IFLA ARL Academic and Research Libraries. (2022, November 24). IFLA ARL Webinar Series: The call to action – Academic libraries responses to the SDGs. [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/UK7blUniu74

International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions. (2022, November 2).  IFLA ARL Webinar Series: The call to action – academic libraries responses to the SDGs. https://www.ifla.org/events/ifla-arl-webinar-series-the-call-to-action-academic-libraries-responses-to-the-sdgs/

Jones, L & Ko, L. Y (2018, July23) IFLA International Advocacy Programme. Hong Kong Library Association. https://hkla.org/hkla_news/ifla-international-advocacy-programme/

Ma, L. F. H., & Ko, L. Y. (2022). Supporting the sustainable development goals: The role of the Chinese University of Hong Kong Library. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 48(4), 102562–. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2022.102562

 

Lily Y. Ko, Head
Learning Services
The Chinese University of Hong Kong Library, Hong Kong SAR, The People’s Republic of China

Author:  Shaharima Parvin, Senior Assistant Librarian, East West University, Dhaka, Bangladesh

Library and information science (LIS) professionals have been incorporating emerging technologies in service innovation and sustainability. Many legacy sectors, including libraries, have been transforming their services and resources through the digital revolution, to fulfill patron’s expectations.

Involvement in the Open Access (OA) movement by Library and Information Science (LIS) professionals in Bangladesh:

Libraries have always been about providing access to scholarly information. LIS professionals in Bangladesh have traditionally been the guardians of books, records, and databases. Things have changed in the libraries of Bangladesh due to the Open Access (OA) movement. OA is essential for scholarly communication in the twenty-first century as this movement ensures equal access to scholarly publications by the research community. Since the Budapest Open Access Initiative was signed in 2002, the availability of OA resources has been rising. Governmental agencies, universities, research institutions, and other stakeholders have introduced or expanded initiatives to make OA content available and accessible. The OA movement has resulted in massive changes for libraries and prompted new ways of thinking. Many librarians’ responsibilities have expanded well beyond their initial job descriptions, particularly due to the OA movement.

The government of Bangladesh has a vision to build “Digital Bangladesh” to democratize information dissemination to foster participatory citizenship. Through the Right to Information (RTI) Act of 2009, the Government of Bangladesh has supported OA initiatives. Digital Library (DL) and Institutional Repository (IR) initiatives are supported by LIS professionals in Bangladesh. Since 2005, research and university libraries in Bangladesh have been using DSpace and Greenstone Digital Library open source software for building DL and IR.

Access to electronic resources by the academic community in Bangladesh has been limited mostly due to awareness and the huge cost associated with accessing such resources. This scenario has improved with the formation of Bangladesh INASP-PERI consortium by Bangladesh Academy of Sciences (BAS) in 2007. It offers a huge number of e-resources for its member libraries with affordable subscription rates. In 2019, Bangladesh INASP-PERii Consortium (BIPC) transformed and was renamed The Library Consortium of Bangladesh (LiCoB). In 2012, UGC Digital Library (UDL) by the University Grants Commission (UGC) of Bangladesh. The main aim of these consortia is to subscribe to electronic resources for the member institutions at lower rates of subscription. In 2007, Bangladesh Journals Online (BanglaJOL) was established by INASP (International Network for Advancing Science and Policy) in order to “provide access to Bangladesh published research, and increase worldwide knowledge of indigenous scholarship”.

Necessity for Scholarly Communication Librarians (SCL) in Bangladesh:

As the function of libraries changes in this OA movement, so does the job of librarians. Libraries’ collective action has become equally vital. Some libraries and professional groups in Bangladesh have a keen interest in developing new skills of upcoming generations to meet the needs of the OA movement and scholarly communication. According to the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) scholarly communication is “the system through which research and other scholarly writings are created, evaluated for quality, disseminated to the scholarly community, and preserved for future use. The system includes both formal means of communication, such as publication in peer-reviewed journals, and informal channels, such as electronic listservs.” Academic and research libraries have potential roles in implementing and sustaining scholarly communication systems. University libraries in Bangladesh always take actions to ensure communities provide equal access to education opportunities and are committed to constant improvement of their services.

Image credit: Shaharima Parvin via Flickr

 

The concept and need for a scholarly communication librarian are ideas not commonly held in Bangladesh. Basically, library heads and/or the person who is managing the electronic resources, and/or the person who is managing the DL or IR of a library are providing related services already. These include answering queries related to scholarly publishing technologies and platforms, copyright issues, assisting with the evaluation of scholarly contents and so on. But, there are potential additional areas to prioritize for university libraries. New areas include including making policy for scholarly communication models, planning, implementing and assessing scholarly communication related initiatives, open access publishing, publishing software knowledge, programming languages, research data lifecycle models, open licensing, creative commons licenses, collaboration with stakeholders to build events, advocacy, strategic leadership skills, and other issues as per required.

Working as an electronic resource librarian at a university library in Bangladesh, I have observed that university libraries are emphasizing the importance of service innovation, collection and policy development, building strong relationships between libraries and researchers, the quality of research publications, and skills development of library staff.

The East West University (EWU) library is one of the pioneer libraries of Bangladesh with significant impact in the library profession with innovations and leadership in OA. This library is the pioneer for launching the Department Wise Resource Portal with library personnel assigned as a subject librarian for each department. As with any new service, proper policy formation, legislation, and infrastructure are needed. The EWU library is providing scholarly communication librarians and library administration with relevant training in order to gain necessary competencies for SCL.

The library is following the NASIG Core Competencies for Scholarly Communication Librarians. The categories of the core competencies are personal strengths, institutional repository management, publishing services, copyright services, data management services, assessment, and impact metrics. The library administration identifies online training on the current trends, topics, and issues in scholarly communication and assigns library personnel to attend these events. This is the initial stage of the SC plan for the university community, and I am working closely with the library director for implementing the SC plan in our scholar communities.

There is not a doubt that to foster SCL development, we need to be creative and take risks in exploring new ideas and implementing these ideas among scholarly communities. Additionally, collaboration and cooperation with pertinent stakeholders are essential for the improvement and sustainability of the scholarly communication landscape.

 

Shaharima Parvin
Senior Assistant Librarian
East West University, Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Email: shaharima@ewubd.edu
Website http://lib.ewubd.edu

Author: Olga Einasto, PhD, University of Tartu Library, Estonia

Young people born in the late 1990s and early 2000s are called the Zoomer generation or the Zoomers. They are also known as Digital Natives, the 5G- and @generation, referring to their deep connection with the internet and digital devices.

 

 

Statistically, this generation forms already more than 32% of the world’s population. The oldest of them have reached the age of university students and they will soon form a new generation of university library users. Everyday communication with them shows us that the young library users of today differ from the older generations, e.g. the Boomers, in several important ways:¹

LIBRARY USER TODAY	LIBRARY USER YESTERDAY
Skilled	Wise
Demanding	Indulgent
With high expectations	With average expectations
Extremely rushing	Not rushing, patient
With vague and uncertain wishes	With Concrete wishes
Trusts the internet	Trusts the librarian
Relations: network, partnership	Relations: subordination
Values: technology, skills	Values: books, knowledge
Looks for people holding the same views	Looks for experience and entertainment

If you want to get closer to the new generation, you will want to bear in mind that:

• The new generation hates long texts and their attention span does not exceed 8 seconds.² We have to make more and more effort in creating the information content that would attract them immediately.
• When choosing communication channels, it would be useful to consider that Zoomers daily spend more than three hours watching different types of video content. When searching for information, they primarily look at results containing videos. They pay most attention to platforms focussing on video content, such as YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok. Their favourite web site of critical importance is YouTube
• For 70% of Zoomers, YouTube creators are more influential than traditional celebrities.³
• Zoomers prefer to open their e-mails in their phone. Therefore, the library information on the internet and in e-mails needs to be optimised for the smartphone. For Zoomers, everything has to be aesthetic, but also funny and exciting, as they literally feed on emotions and are always in search of new experiences.
• A survey of young Estonian consumers shows that Zoomers perform 32% of their transactions with smartphones. However, before making a purchase, only 24% would ask for advice on live chat and 47% would communicate directly with a salesperson. Surprisingly, this digital generation still enjoys face-to-face communication. We should communicate with them, ask for their opinion and include them in decision-making. We cannot lecture them, because they value immediate and positive communication.
• It is good to see that this generation loves books. There is no need to discuss whether books would have a future. Reading books on paper is often a pleasant change from the electronic media, we should keep suggesting good books to read.
• Zoomers are gratifying library users as they love to read and share suggestions. They can spread our information in their communities and they love to write comments and reviews on social media. They are also not afraid of expressing their dissatisfaction and publicly give negative feedback.

The new generation has many wonderful and even unexpected characteristics. However, we must not forget that, although they mainly live in a digital world, they are human beings who need immediate contact and understanding. To reach a better mutual understanding, we should actively communicate with them to realise their needs and to understand what is important to them.

¹ see Time is Out of Joint, Renewed Library
² see Time, New York Times
³ see Think With Google

Olga Einasto, PhD
Head of User Services Department
University of Tartu Library, Estonia

Author: Cécile Quach, Library Curator, Gallica Studio Project Manager, BnF

As part of the four hundredth anniversary of Molière’s birth in 2022, LITTE_BOT is a theatrical chatbot which embodies Dom Juan from Molière.

If you come to Paris, why not drop by the recently reopened historic site Richelieu of the French National Library (Bibliothèque nationale de France, or BnF) and sit down in the BOT°PHONE to talk with Dom Juan thanks to the chatbot LITTE_BOT? It is freely accessible in the Roux-Spitz Hall until 15 January 2023.

The LITTE_BOT project questions the technological mediation of chatbots in order to engage in dialogue with a literary work and an author.

More specifically, LITTE_BOT is a research-creation project which aims at renewing the experience of reading and stage performance by conversing with a character from Molière, an emblematic figure of French literature whose works and characters are widely known, through teaching and theatrical performances.

LITTE_BOT transposes a character into a chatbot through dramaturgical strategies thanks to an artificial intelligence trained on Molière’s corpus available on Gallica, the digital library of BnF and its partners. The project was supported by Gallica Studio (now closed), a program from BnF that encourages the use of Gallica’s public domain documents in a creative and collaborative spirit. The aim is to ultimately encourage the emergence of new uses of online common heritage and related tools. In this case, the project revisits heritage through contemporary creation and experiments with the possibilities opened up by artificial intelligence. It also aims at demystifying AI by documenting the creation process.

This project was born in 2018 from the artistic research of Rocio Berenguer, a playwright and choreographer familiar with digital technologies. Rocio Berenguer has found in the works digitized by BnF a new source of inspiration allowing her to cross her own experience as an artist of today with this literary heritage.

Rocio Berenguer sitting in the BOT°PHONE

This complex project was made possible by the grant and the framework provided by the ArTec University Research School in the context of a call for projects from 2019 through 2022. A consortium of research centers, cultural institutions and art schools, ArTec aims to promote and articulate research projects in the fields of the arts, technology, digital technology, human mediation and creation. The projects articulate in an original and inventive way the methodologies of research-creation, research-action, research-development, in a perspective of inclusive and shared excellence. The call for projects was designed to facilitate collaboration between at least two institutions in the consortium. In this case, it was between the BnF and the Paris 8 University, around issues of creation as a research, as well as technologies and human mediation.

This project mobilized skills and resources specific to each partner which needed to be pooled through this partnership in the form of a research-creation project. The partnership also made it possible to explore cross-cutting issues.

For BnF, the added value in experimenting with a chatbot as a voice mediation interface for a cultural institution lies in the investigation of the benefits of this new type of mediation, especially for the inclusion of people who experience difficulties in reading, but also to help demystify artificial intelligence by documenting the choices and compromises made when the chatbot was created.

From a research perspective, the question is to know how to create and interpret the characteristics that determine the uniqueness of a literary character in the Man/Machine dialogue without having previously detected and employed these characteristics for the deep learning of an artificial intelligence.

In light of these issues and objectives, the challenges we faced were:
● Speaking 17th century French and understanding today’s French
● Building up a new database from a corpus of 17th century French theatre
● Processing feeling and emotion (AI impersonating a seductive Don Juan)
● Make a non-closed expert system
● Create a reproducible model for other literary works

The research part of the project was undertaken by Anna Pappa (LIASD Laboratory) and Samuel Szoniecky (Paragraphe Laboratory) from the Paris 8 University. Engineering the chatbot involved:
● AI Deep Learning for chatbot
● Creating a 17th century theatrical corpus ~100k lines from:
○ Molière’s corpus digitized by Gallica and in TEI produced by the OBVIL in the framework of a previous joint research project between the BnF and the Sorbonne University. Eventually, we also had to include the Dom Juan from Dorimond and Villiers, as well as the French 17th century theatre.
● Training the bot with Seq2Seq model
● Articulating two models:
○ Free conversation using AI model
○ Scripting a guided conversation with the visitor
● Corpus enrichment through additional visitors/bot interactions

The artistic part of the project was handled by playwright Rocio Berenguer:
● Scripting the interaction
● Graphic interface: morphing the visitor’s face (Hugo Arcier)
● Designing the booth BOT°PHONE that contains the chatbot (with Arthur Geslin)

Rocio Berenguer directed the chatbot as if it were an actor and created a playful and poetic artificial intelligence device. She has scripted the interaction: the conversation takes place according to a scenario that combines the open chatbot and the closed chatbot. The database has been indexed by Rocio according to each stage of the scenario.

As for the staging of the device, it aims to allow a playful and poetic experience. A comfortable, noise-isolated booth has been built to talk on the phone with Dom Juan. The visitor faces a mirror display where his face is scanned and mixed with other fictional faces. Taking up the idea of the philosopher Jean Baudrillard, who assumes that seduction is the theft of the other person’s desire, the chatbot will gradually steal the desire of the person in front of it and… go so far as to steal its face.

Morphing in progress while talking with LITTE_BOT ((c) L’ADN/Romane Mugnier)

The project also includes a historical and linguistic approach to Molière’s theatre thanks to the collaboration of Georges Forestier, professor of French literature at the Sorbonne. He advised to make the chatbot embody a character from Molière, and to choose Dom Juan as a character eager to meet new people.

It also resonates with the collections of the BnF’s Performing Arts Department headed by Joël Huthwohl and with the BnF’s Molière 2022 exhibition, an exhibition produced in partnership with the Comédie-Française.

In the end, the fact of wanting to train an AI model from a database created from scratch, and of having chosen the character of Dom Juan (which made it harder to achieve a critical mass of data) has made it difficult to meet the deadline of the exhibition. So when B12 Consulting, a Belgian company specialized in automatic language processing, offered Rocio Berenguer to create a chatbot pro bono, they were quite welcome. We gave them the corpora and the database already built. Hugo Dendievel used the GPT-2 model (already pre-trained) and pondered it with Molière’s corpus, and the Dom Juan dataset. This model was combined with a similarity analysis model based on a list of questions and answers handled by Rocio Berenguer.

However, the chatbot resulting from the research part is still going on, in order to create a reproducible model for other literary works, in partnership with Tristan Cazenave, professor at Paris Dauphine University (LAMSADE laboratory). It is now based on GPT-3 model and has been replicated for Molière’s theatre in prose and rhyme, and for Bertolt Brecht’s theatre. You may chat with it online here.

Screenshot of the chatbot from Paris 8 and Paris Dauphine

For both the exhibition chatbot and this online chatbot, the aim was to get as close as possible to the illusion of a conversation with an identifiable theatre character. The evaluation of these chatbots is done both according to the technical metrics of chatbot design and according to the linguistic and literary criteria of the chosen playwright.
But it is still a computer program, even if it is an AI, and the user realises this at some point. We accept this imperfection, and this is part of the educational aspect of the project. As Rocio Berenguer puts it, this gap also makes us aware of the power of human capacities and of what real human interaction is, which also has its hazards and misunderstandings.

Cécile Quach, library curator, Gallica Studio project manager cecile.quach@bnf.fr

Acknowledgements
This research-creation project was carried out by Rocio Berenguer, the Performing Arts Department of the BnF and the LIASD and Paragraphe laboratories of the University of Paris 8 within the framework of Gallica Studio, thanks to the support of the ArTec University Research School, a State grant managed by the National Research Agency under the Programme of Future Investments (ANR-17-EURE-008) The booth was supported by the Université Paris Lumières. The public version of the chatbot was developed with B12 Consulting.

Further readings
(In French, apart from the first reference)
● Litte_Bot : a theatrical dialogue system using Seq2Seq model by A/Prof Anna Pappa, Université Paris 8-France, AI4LAM Community Call,19 April 2022, Content Generative Models and GLAM
● Press release of the exhibition Molière, le jeu du vrai et du faux
● The interview of the actors of the project, with a view to educating the general public about AI: https://bnf.hypotheses.org/12976. A QR code on the cartel of the work refers to it.
● Page of the BOT°PHONE on the BnF website
● Interviews of Rocio Berenguer in the ADN webzine and L’Eclaireur de la Fnac.
● BnF’s Ai roadmap
● Ai projects at the BnF

Team

Artistic conception of the work BOT°PHONE
Rocio Berenguer, design, artistic direction and dramaturgy
Hugo Arcier, visual creation 3D avatar
Arthur Geslin, co-design of the installation
Léopold Frey, sound creation, chatbot development and integration
Étienne Champagne, UE4 development & Face Tracking
Gesture, technical design and construction of the installation

Scientific design of the chatbot LITTE_BOT
Anna Pappa, Associate Professor in Computer Science – University of Paris 8
Samuel Szoniecky, Associate Professor in Information and Communication Sciences – University of Paris 8
With the collaboration of Georges Forestier, Professor of French Literature, Sorbonne University
Michel Herquet, Partner and Hugo Dendievel, Analyst Developer at B12 Consulting: Collaboration for the creation of the public version of the chatbot.

BnF Coordination team
Cécile Quach, Library Curator, Gallica Studio project manager
Joël Huthwohl, Director of the Performing Arts Department
Arnaud Laborderie, Gallica Project Manager, also Associate Professor at Paris 8 University, Paragraphe laboratory
Peter Stirling, Research Project Officer

Author: Danitza Coronel, La Paz, Bolivia

I am Bolivian and my dream of attending an IFLA Congress began five years ago in the city of Bogotá, Colombia, when I was serving as a full-time missionary in philanthropic work. One day in the Fontibón Park, I saw that while some children practiced skating, their mothers were reading books while waiting for them. That was an unusual image on this side of South America and made possible because of a project called “Park Libraries” which brings books and libraries into parks. I thought that anyone who implemented this project is a true visionary, understanding that this could really have an impact on society and is someone who I wanted to become. It is then that, with determination, I knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
I am currently a librarian by vocation and conviction, a student of Library and Information Sciences in the final phase of my undergraduate studies, and a passionate young reader. I have been working in libraries for four years and now I am in charge of the UMSA Nursing Career Specialized Library. It was a real honor for me to be part of the IFLA WLIC 2022, thanks to the ARL grant that I received. I was one of the few people from Bolivia and South America who were part of this event where professionals from all over the world came together, committed to library goals as much as I am. I certainly didn’t feel alone.
During the sessions, the sustainability of literacy projects in different communities was highlighted. A phrase that remains in my memory is “Sustainable development is found in cultural diversity and contribution”. It was inspiring and many ideas came to my mind when thinking about the reality of education and libraries in Bolivia.
It is clear to me that each of the issues that were addressed have to do with the ODS, since each strategy has a global scope and it is a pressing need for libraries to work with a broader vision of social commitment from the smallest of libraries to large networks or information systems.
The WLIC 2022 motto was “Inspire, engage, enable, connect” and for me everything was literally fulfilled. I connected with many people and I noticed that, although we are on different continents and with different cultures, we have a lot in common when we work together and start a dialogue about access to information and how to build educated and knowledgeable societies.

I was inspired by such wonderful projects in the poster exhibition like: “Big Heart, Bring Happiness to Communities” from Malaysia, “One Author-Five Islands” from Ireland, “Strangers in a Strange Land” from USA, “Librarians are they cat people?”from France and Peru, and many more. A true parade of innovation!
Undoubtedly, after this experience my vision for the future is broader, the technologies applied in the library fueled in me the desire to work for more humanized information services that connect with people. The new IFLA UNESCO MANIFESTO FOR PUBLIC LIBRARIES resounds, exhorting: Access, democratic access to information and knowledge for the full development of the human being!
My first WLIC, the first of many.

Danitza Coronel
danitza.coronel.tola@gmail.com
La Paz, Bolivia