AI You Can Trust: Supporting Library Work with Care and Transparency

As artificial intelligence becomes part of more library systems, it brings both opportunity and important questions.
How will it affect daily work? How transparent will it be? And how can libraries adopt AI while staying true to their values?

In Alma, AI is introduced thoughtfully and deliberately. The goal is not to change how libraries define success, but to support the work they already do – making it easier, clearer, and more sustainable as expectations continue to rise.

This chapter explores how trust, transparency, and librarian control shape the way AI is developed and used in Alma.

Designed to Work with Librarians, Not Around Them

AI in Alma is built to assist library staff, not to act independently or replace professional judgment. Its role is to support decision-making by offering helpful input, not to take action on its own.

Across workflows – from metadata enrichment to analytics and everyday operational tasks – AI helps surface relevant information, highlight patterns, and suggest next steps that might otherwise require time-consuming manual effort. Librarians remain fully in control, choosing what to use, what to adjust, and what to set aside based on their expertise and local context.

This approach ensures that professional judgment stays at the center of every workflow. AI handles routine or repetitive steps that can slow teams down, while librarians focus on the decisions, nuances, and responsibilities that require human insight. The result is a more efficient, balanced way of working – where technology supports expertise rather than competing with it.

Clear and Understandable by Design

Trust grows when systems are easy to understand and predictable in how they behave. For librarians, clarity isn’t just a convenience – it’s essential for making confident decisions and maintaining control over daily work.

That’s why AI-powered features in Alma are designed to be visible, understandable, and intentional:

• Suggestions are clearly identified as AI-generated, so users always know when AI is involved
• Insights are grounded in familiar data, making it easier to interpret results and understand their context
• Actions remain deliberate and reviewable, ensuring nothing happens automatically without awareness or approval

Rather than adding complexity or obscuring processes, AI in Alma is meant to simplify interactions with the system. By making AI’s role clear and its outputs easy to evaluate, Alma helps users feel confident about what they’re seeing, why it matters, and how it fits into their workflows.

Respecting Library Standards and Responsibilities

Libraries operate with a deep responsibility to their users, collections, and institutions – a responsibility built on trust, accountability, and care. As AI becomes part of library systems, those same expectations naturally extend to how AI is designed and used.

AI in Alma is developed with careful attention to:

• Privacy and data protection, ensuring that user and institutional data is handled responsibly
• Copyright and licensing considerations, respecting the agreements and frameworks libraries depend on
• Ethical use of information, with safeguards that align with professional values
• Evolving community standards, reflecting best practices emerging across the library ecosystem

AI is introduced where it brings clear, meaningful value, and deliberately avoided where it could create unnecessary risk, uncertainty, or loss of clarity. This measured approach allows libraries to benefit from innovation while continuing to uphold the principles that define their role – protecting trust, ensuring accountability, and supporting responsible access to information.

Adoption at Your Own Pace

Every library is different, shaped by its community, priorities, and resources. For that reason, there is no single path to adopting AI.

Alma’s AI capabilities are designed to be flexible and optional, allowing libraries to explore new features at their own pace. Teams can decide where AI is most helpful, start small, and continue working in familiar ways as they build understanding and confidence over time.

This approach encourages learning and experimentation without disruption. Libraries can evaluate how AI fits into their existing workflows, adjust as needed, and adopt new capabilities when they’re ready – ensuring that change feels intentional, manageable, and aligned with their goals.

Built in Partnership with the Library Community

AI in Alma continues to evolve through close collaboration with libraries around the world – not only during early design and research, but throughout development and release.

Many of Alma’s more innovative AI capabilities are first shaped through focused collaboration with interested libraries. From there, they are made available to the broader Alma community in Preview Mode, giving libraries the opportunity to explore new functionality, experience it in real workflows, and share feedback before full release.

This approach has been applied to the AI Metadata Assistant, which was introduced in Preview Mode to allow libraries to experience AI-supported metadata enrichment firsthand and help shape future enhancements.

A similar approach was taken with Alma AI Assistant for Acquisitions Funds and Ledgers, Alma’s first conversational assistant. Following an early access phase with a small group of institutions, the feature was introduced in Preview Mode across Alma environments, allowing administrators to enable it at their discretion and contribute feedback that continues to inform its development.

This extended feedback loop ensures that AI in Alma evolves in ways that reflect the needs of a wide, diverse library community – balancing innovation with transparency, choice, and real-world applicability.

Moving Forward with Confidence

AI doesn’t change the mission of libraries. It supports it.

By helping manage scale, simplify routine work, and highlight meaningful insights, AI allows libraries to focus more time and energy on teaching, research, and user engagement.

With a transparent, careful, and human-centered approach, Alma helps libraries explore the benefits of AI with confidence – today and as expectations continue to grow.