Inspire Me with AI recommendations, or, Libby’s gone grey?
Have you noticed that the Libby home screen looks a bit different lately? The middle button, which is usually the colorful Libby icon, has turned a mysterious grey color. It’s the menu option to access Libby’s new AI Reader’s Advisory tool, Inspire Me.
I might be a little skeptical about AI functions being smashed into every app and aspect of our digital lives. However, Inspire Me has rolled out to Libby users worldwide this month, and you might get some questions about it. It isn’t completely awful, I promise!
Below, you can see that the Home button has been replaced by that grey-ed out Libby icon. Tapping it takes users to the Inspire Me screen.
Users are first presented with simple options: fiction, nonfiction, and tags. The tags option lets users select from their own self-created tags, which I think is pretty cool.
Note that on this screen, users can scroll past the Inspire Me section to access the usual home menu. I’ve already heard some outcry over the “loss” of the settings and support tools, so it’s good to know the menu is still there. There’s no way to turn off or opt out of Inspire Me mode, but users can scroll past it to get to the regular Manage Cards, Settings, Information, and Help sections.
After the basics, patrons are presented with more granular subjects as well as age groups (kids, teens, and adults). Only one subject can be selected at a time. In this example, users wouldn’t be able to select “aquatic” and “celestial” (though if you have a recommendation, let me know!). I chose “adventurous.”
Behold! Libby presents the AI generated “inspirations,” which are short summaries pulled from Libby’s metadata and passed through an LLM. “Arctic expeditions ending in disaster and loss” (Shackleton/Endurance edit added for dramatic effect)? My favorite!
Once users have picked an inspiration, they can swipe through to choose from five recommended titles. Libby prioritizes titles that are currently available for check out in the catalog.
As we all know, AI and large language models are imperfect and can make mistakes. If the Inspire Me recommendations seem off in any way, users can flag it as inappropriate and explain why. “Inappropriate” here means the suggestion does not match the prompts, e.g. if I got title recommendations about meatball recipes or outer space.
A chart pops up where users can select which suggestion was inappropriate. Submissions are anonymous, so users won’t receive a response from OverDrive, but it helps train hallucinations out of the AI tool.
That’s Libby’s AI RA tool in a nutshell. If you are interested in patron privacy, environmental impact, and other common issues surrounding this new technology, you can click here to read what OverDrive has to say about it.
Personally, I wish there were improvements in their basic search function (can we get an “OR” operator please!) before they jumped on the AI bandwagon, but here we are. Have you used this new function yet? How inspired are you? Have you heard anything from your patrons about it?
Once more unto the breach,
-Mary Phillips – Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
