Executive Summary

In July 1970, Heinz von Foerster, a leading Austrian American scientist, delivered an address to what is now the University of Wisconsin’s I-School, and what was then the Library Institute. He had been asked to reflect on the ways in which emerging computational technologies would impact the future of the library and library staff. Rather than directly addressing this brief, von Foerster instead argued that library staff had considerable agency in deciding not only what technologies might be successful in libraries, but what technologies might be successful writ large. In so doing, he made clear his belief in the power of libraries and their centrality to what he poetically described as the ‘’social fabric of the future’’. Von Foerster articulated two important and complementary roles for libraries and library staff – as custodians of collections and midwives of ideas. More than half a century later, his words still make considerable sense.

Custodians and Midwives is the outcome of a research collaboration between the National Library of Australia (NLA) and new School of Cybernetics (SoCy) at the Australian National University (ANU). This collaboration was undertaken in the first half of 2021. During the collaboration, SoCy researchers investigated and evaluated the potential new dynamics that will emerge if, and when, the NLA integrates tools and processes enabled by promising artificial intelligence (AI) technology capabilities into core work processes of the organisation’s mission to “collect, preserve and make accessible” library materials (National Library Act 1960 (Cth)).

The new School of Cybernetics sits within the College of Engineering and Computer Science at the ANU. Established in January 2021, the School of Cybernetics builds on the pioneering work done in the 3Ai Institute (2017-2020), which led the world in designing education on an approach to safely, sustainably, and responsibly scale AI. Under the leadership of Distinguished Professor Genevieve Bell AO FSTE FAHA, the new school is updating cybernetics for the 21st century. The team is applying an approach to thinking about systems of technology, people, and environment that responds to, and modifies, the technocratic approach that has typified the development and evaluation of the increasingly complex digital-enabled systems of the last half century. As AI systems are increasingly embedded in everyday processes and spaces, the cybernetic approach presents a compelling way of thinking about how to design and manage complex systems that are dynamic, interactive, and relationship-dependent.

This approach seems particularly relevant to the NLA as it seeks to fulfil its role to “collect, preserve and make accessible” resources of national significance, as defined by the National Library Act 1960 (Cth). In Custodians and Midwives, we take a cybernetic systems approach to the questions of how new and emerging technology capabilities might shape and be shaped by the future of the NLA.

In this report, we provide a library collections-centric analysis of clusters of AI capabilities to support the NLA in making decisions regarding the integration of AI-enabled technology systems into the organisation’s processes now and in the future. We prioritise clusters of capabilities defined as (1) the services a class of technologies provide, and as (2) knowledge that can be applied to specific technology products and processes. Focusing on AI capabilities, rather than specific products and processes in the market or deployable now, enables us to outline a pathway for the NLA to evaluate opportunities, risks, pitfalls, and issues (ORPI) with AI over the timescales and rhythms that characterise the library as a cybernetic system.

The report is divided into five discrete sections:

• In Section 1, we detail the foundations for an approach to evaluating the suitability and fit of emerging AI capabilities for the NLA. These emerging AI capabilities must be considered not only in isolation but also within the broader system of the whole of the NLA – its people, its systems and processes, and its data, collections, and extant infrastructure.

This systems approach is critical to successful technology deployments, and given the complexities of the library, we propose a cybernetic systems approach.

We explore the NLA as a cybernetic system and the dynamics of this system from a collection-centric perspective. • In Section 2, we turn to the technological innovation in and of libraries, and the pathways that have led to new AI capabilities in these systems, focusing on automation, digitisation, and AI. There is an overview of the landscape, emerging trends, and approaches taken by others in the library sector, including peer national libraries. We detail the landscape of AI and machine learning (ML) capabilities that are most relevant to library services, including a discussion of dominant threads in the

Responsible AI conversations. • In Section 3, we use science fiction prototyping to explore the future state of the library, focusing specifically on four sets of AI capabilities identified as priorities by the NLA collections branch: Optical Character Recognition,

Machine Transcription, Machine-Actionable

Collections and Transparent AI. We provide visions for the longer-term outcomes of the incorporation of these four clusters of current AI capabilities into the NLA collection workflows, and a detailed review of each cluster, including attendant opportunities, risks, pitfalls, and issues. We complement this section with a further overview of the science fiction prototyping exercises (see Appendix B). • In Section 4, we provide pathways forward for decision makers at the NLA as they encounter specific solutions or approaches that may be incorporated into library practice. Whereas in Section Three, we provide an evaluation of current emerging capabilities, in this section we offer a technology reference guide for the NLA to evaluate options for incorporating AI into library practice, attentive to the role of the

NLA now and in the future.

• The “Cybernetic Star Guide” – our technology reference guide – is a cybernetically-grounded way to evaluate prospective AI applications. It comprises a conceptual perspective on the library as a cybernetic system that sits within many other systems outlined in Section 1 (political, economic, regulatory), as well as a set of tools for supporting confident decision making regarding the direction of AI-enabled collections solutions.

The Cybernetic Star Guide enables a comprehensive examination of the opportunities, risks, pitfalls, and issues with a proposed technology application from the perspective of the internal work processes of the library (implementation issues, knowable risks, automation, and workforce) through to more audience-centric perspectives (ethical concerns, unintended consequences, and impacts on users). We complement this section with additional reference materials and worksheets in

Appendix C. • In Section 5, we provide a glimpse into the emerging socio-technical, business, and regulatory trends that might be relevant to the National Library in coming years, and reflect on the current and future state of the library.

Taken in its totality, we believe this report represents a valuable contribution to the NLA in its dual roles as custodians and midwives for all Australians, today and into the future.

“I feel you should not wait and see what technology will do with you – pardon me, technologists will say ‘for you’ – but rather you should tell technologists what you want to be done.”

Heinz von Foerster 1984, p. 213