Roberta A. Smith University Library
By Amelia Shaffstall
Artificial Intelligence has become a heated topic over the last few years sparking debates on its environmental impacts, copyright issues, and spread of misinformation.
Taylor Burnette
Muskingum University's AI librarian
Nowadays, whether you have a positive or negative opinion about AI, it is getting harder and harder to avoid it. Mainstream companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and more have started fully integrating AI into their systems.
Libby, a free library app developed by OverDrive, has been integrating new AI features over the last few years. One of these features is Inspire Me, an AI powered search tool announced Aug. 26, 2025. The purpose of this feature is to help better connect users with books in their library catalogues instead of using general algorithm generation.
According to the Bipartisan Policy Center there are several common myths about AI; it will steal our jobs, it is free of bias, it can think creatively, it is always correct and there is only one type of AI. Their 2026 article busts these myths and explains the truth behind common misconceptions.
Stanford University defines Generative AI as systems that create new content by learning patterns from training data and generating outputs that resemble that data. This includes visual, audio and text models.
A hallucination is what we call it when GenAI produces incorrect or nonexistent information. In simple terms, this happens because the AI tool confuses the information it scraped from the data available and gives you a mixed-up version of the data.
"Sometimes students use ChatGPT to generate citations [and it hallucinates]. If you don't catch it, you might get pinged by your professor, or if you're publishing, by the journal you're submitting to because of something very small," said Taylor Burnette, Muskingum University's AI librarian.
Burnette says that large language models like Gemini, Claude, and ChatGPT are the most harmful type of AI because of these hallucinations.
"For what I'm encouraged by, there are research tools being produced that are AI powered and directly designed to do research," Burnette said. "Looking at these research tools, I see a lot more hope in them than in the large language models for research purposes."
Burnette is on the Applied AI Minor Committee. They are discussing the possibility of adding an applied AI minor to future Muskingum University catalogues.
The minor is "a multidisciplinary look that includes an introduction to AI as well as classes on ethics and more nuanced areas of it. It will allow students to explore AI on an academic level and within their disciplines to compliment the education they're getting in other classes." Burnette said.
Burnette graduated from Ohio University in 2023 with a degree in journalism. She turned her love for sharing accurate and helpful information into a degree in library science from Indiana University of Bloomington. Burnette started at Muskingum University in her new role as reference, instruction, and AI librarian in July 2026.
For questions and conversations you can get in touch with Burnette at taylorb@muskingum.edu or (740) 826-8154.
