New Survey Report Shows How Library Workers Use AI in Ontario

A new report shows how Ontario library professionals are using AI tools in their day-to-day work and their perspectives on these burgeoning technologies. See the press release and access the 8-page PDF at https://ocul.on.ca/ai-machine-learning-2025-survey-report Surely Ontario isn’t unique?

This is one of the first reports I recall seeing that includes at least a few specifics on how Library Workers are using AI tools, and which tools they’re using, though there still aren’t many specific cases outlined. Still worth the time to read.

If I’d answered the survey, my responses would’ve shown the following tools used, in roughly this order: Perplexity, ChatGPT, Claude, Microsoft Copilot (our institutionally-supplied tool). And using the categories from the survey, I use these tools in this order: To fill gaps in disciplinary knowledge (including replacing traditional web searching with Perplexity), brainstorming, and coding. 

Not obviously addressed in the survey, I have paid out of pocket to use some of these tools, though have not taken out an annual subscription yet. In fact, I just hit a limit on Claude that makes me think I’ll have to toss them another month’s revenue ($28 Cdn in this case) to finish a project I’m working on. I have also paid out of pocket for API access to a number of LLMs – probably sitting at $50-$60 Cdn in total for those.

What are YOU actually using, and for what purpose(s). Is work paying for it, or are you?

Oh, and what would you call someone who experiments with multiple models/tools? The best I’ve come up with is polyAImorous… 🙂