{"id":1128,"date":"2025-10-01T13:35:30","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T13:35:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/asl\/?p=1128"},"modified":"2025-10-01T13:35:30","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T13:35:30","slug":"what-ai-did-next-exploring-ais-role-in-european-theological-libraries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/asl\/2025\/10\/01\/what-ai-did-next-exploring-ais-role-in-european-theological-libraries\/","title":{"rendered":"What AI did next : exploring AI\u2019s role in European theological libraries"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"BETH<\/p>\n

I was privileged to attend the BETH<\/a> = Bibliotheques Europeennes de Theologie conference in Stavanger, Norway, 20-23 September 2025, which had the theme of exploring AI\u2019s role in Theological libraries. I really appreciated the practical nature of many of the papers in this conference, which highlighted projects and processes using AI that had been implemented in libraries. I also felt that there was also a second theme or undercurrent, that of highlighting the human value of libraries and the books they contain.<\/p>\n

\"View

View down into Stavanger<\/p><\/div>\n

Before we dived into AI, there was a walking tour of Stavanger, starting at Stavanger Cathedral, the oldest cathedral in Norway at 900 years old. Stavanger is located in what is known as the \u2018Bible Belt\u2019 of west and south Norway, and used to be called the mission city of Norway because it sent out so many missionaries. I was impressed by several richly detailed epitaphs with paintings of the deceased with their family. Our tour also took in St Peter\u2019s Church, a more \u2018regular\u2019 Norwegian church, where a rehearsing worship band created an atmospheric visit. Our last \u2018church stop\u2019 was at a historic \u2018prayer house\u2019, an upstairs room used as a meeting room by non-conformist churches that sprang up after the Dissenter Act in 1845 allowed Christian gatherings other than the established Church of Norway. Today it is used as a youth church meeting place by the Church of Norway. Our tour took in Stavanger\u2019s streets of painted wooden houses, harbour and hilltop views. We ended up at the conference location, VID Specialised University, where we were greeted by lovely Norwegian waffles and coffee.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Historic epitaph, Stavanger Cathedral<\/p><\/div>\n

The first day of the conference closed with a film showing of Le Poids des livres : la biblioth\u00e8que de Port-Royal<\/em>. In preparation for the Biblioth\u00e8que de Port-Royal’s move to new premises in 2022-23, two filmmakers, Camille de Chenay and Adrien Pierre, followed the life of the library for six years. The documentary film that resulted is a love song to the library and a powerful piece of advocacy about the value of the library and the human stories it holds and creates. It\u2019s not currently available on YouTube as it\u2019s being shown at film festivals but it should be in the future \u2013 I really recommend that you watch it!<\/p>\n

\"\"

Historic Mission school building, VID Specialized University<\/p><\/div>\n

Hannah Pope from VID Specialised University kicked off the papers about AI by exploring the role of the librarian. She suggested that we may feel saturated by suggestions about AI, and be struggling between knowing that it is important but also hearing that it is problematic. AI is a tool \u2013 or rather, a whole bunch of them \u2013 but the difficulty is that we may not be able to pick up and put down that tool at will. It\u2019s appearing all the time in our environment, in a \u201cgold rush\u201d of AI not necessarily in our control. \u00a0Ignoring AI is no longer an option. We are still in the early stages of understanding AI, and it is similar to the advent of the World Wide Web, so it could be argued \u201cThat all turned out fine.\u201d But AI \u2013 Gen AI \u2013 is an explosion, of bots, deep fakes, and disinformation. Often in the library we\u2019re expected to be ambassadors for AI, but often conversations around AI lack nuance and understanding of the complexities \u2013 there is a role for the information professional here. Librarians are ideally positioned to have a foot in both camps, to challenge and adopt.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Juergen Warmbrunn from Herder Institute Research Library, Marburg<\/em> shared a paper \u201cAI in libraries: just think about it or do it?\u201d. <\/em>This immediately got my attention by talking about using Gen AI to handle lists of large donations to the library. Warmbrunn had had success using ChatGPT LLMs to i<\/em>dentify unique items from donations lists, although there had been some challenges applying LLMs to the PICA Library system. Other successful projects had used AI tools in cataloguing a large donation in Latvian, and in developing a \u2018Table of Contents\u2019 awareness service for incoming research publications. Warmbrunn felt there had been a positive reduction of work processes and increased outputs. Importantly, there had been no negative consequences for staffing levels.<\/p>\n

In contrast, Donatella Bellardini, from the General Library of the Historical Studies Center PP. Barnabiti, Rome spoke about \u201cReading literacy, gamification, library services, and Artificial Intelligence\u201d. This focused on a pilot project aiming to combat educational poverty and counter the negative effects of AI through promoting reading and critical thinking. Reading groups were held in the library, with children engaging in activities to follow clues about the books they liked best. The underlying premise was that books remain essential in supporting critical thinking, and that we should honour our traditions whilst embracing technological achievements.<\/p>\n

Henrik Holtvedt Andersen from MF Norwegian School of Religion and Society, Oslo presented on \u201cUsing AI to digitise and curate sensitive research data\u201d, in a project where paper surveys were digitised to create image (jpg) files. He discussed the data issues of using ChatGPT as a tool, when the free version of ChatGPT has open data, though the Teams or Enterprise subscriptions enable data security. The University of Oslo has its own AI tool which is GDPR compliant. His project had also developed his skills in prompt engineering, with giving the query in natural language, providing context and background information, clear instructions and examples working well. Learning points for me included that CHatGPT has memory, so previous prompts are to some degree part of new ones. It\u2019s an effective way of working to create a project in ChatGPT and save all your chats to it.<\/p>\n

\"\"

In the Mission archives<\/p><\/div>\n

We had an opportunity to visit the library, archives and museum collections at VID Specialized University. VID has an agreement with the National Library of Norway to retain mission and church archives from denominations other than the Church of Norway. There are about 550 archive collections. This reflects its history as the archives of the Norwegian Mission Society (NMS) which was founded in Stavanger August 1842. In the library, the office of one of the most prominent missionaries has been reconstructed and used as a focal point for his historic book collections.\u00a0 VID Library overall has about 80, 000 volumes. It benefits from the digitisation programmes of the National Library of Norway, which have digitised a significant amount of the Norwegian\u00a0 material printed before 1980.<\/p>\n

John Kutsko from Atla reported on the Global Survey, picking up on the survey themes of changes in theological education and the relationship of the Library in the organisation. The full report should be published shortly. Then, Riccardo Amerigo Vigliermo and Federico Ruozzi presented on AI and Non-Latin alphabet cataloguing: the Digital Maktaba Project<\/em>. \u00a0This has developed AI tools to catalogue Arabic-script theological collections. I can\u2019t tell you much more except it looked Very Clever \u2013 please follow up with them!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Continuing the theme of AI & Cataloguing Workflows, Hannes Lowagie, Royal Library of Brussels, spoke about how they have embraced artificial intelligence to reimagine cataloguing workflows. AI was used as part of a large cataloguing retroconversion project, which scanned title pages of books to identify the books and create a basic record. This used the Microsoft Power platform, designed for \u2018Citizen developers\u2019, and worked well for early 20thC and late 19thC books which have a lot of information on the title page. Lowagie had also explored the potential use of AI for classification by building prompts to add classification terms. This has set up an automated classification workflow that covers the basic tasks, meaning he can now ask more in terms of complex subject indexing from staff. Key benefits included consistency in bibliographic records, a scalable infrastructure to support future book deposits, and AI integration that enables collaboration and the shared use of models, training data and cataloguing rules. Last but not least, AI enables the use of human cataloguers for really expert things. Issues include a reliance on Microsoft, when if they stop paying the licence, they lose the tool.<\/p>\n

Martin Fassnacht from the University of Tubingen spoke about how AI is changing the IXTheo<\/a> tool. They have piloted using DeepSeek with IXTheo data and come back with plausible results. Enabling natural language queries in IX Theo is one of the goals. Risks include the quality of the answer, and economics \u2013 licenses can change.<\/p>\n

Jaime Lopez de Eguilaz spoke about the Bilbao Diocesan Library, which is marking the 75th anniversary of its diocese. This diocesan heritage library is showcasing its journey since 1956 through public exhibitions and community engagement. It is also looking ahead to the integration of AI by using a chatbot.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday afternoon, we visited the Norwegian Museum of Printing. A fascinating exhibition on the history of the printed book in Norway displayed 16th and 17th C imprints with waste manuscript bindings.These manuscripts preserved as bindings represent some of the very few fragments of pre-Reformation medieval manuscripts in Norway. Norway came relatively late to book culture, as until the 19thC it was governed by Denmark and most printing took place in Copenhagen. The museum maintains a hands on print shop with historic examples of printing equipment and machines, with student placements, internships and community groups working to maintain and retain historic printing skills.<\/p>\n

\"\"

At the print shop, Norwegian Printing Museum<\/p><\/div>\n

To close, I think the most memorable quote of the conference for me was from Juergen Warmbrunn Herder Institute Research Library, Marburg<\/em> \u201cWith the use of AI, clever people will become more clever and stupid people will become more stupid<\/em>.\u201d What does this mean? Reflecting on my own experience, I think it means that if we can engage cleverly, critically and creatively with AI, we can leverage the benefits of AI to make the world better. If we ignore AI, we risk AI influencing and even controlling us through its omnipresence in the digital environment that surrounds us all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was privileged to attend the BETH = Bibliotheques Europeennes de Theologie conference in Stavanger, Norway, 20-23 September 2025, which had the theme of exploring AI\u2019s role in Theological libraries. 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There were two questions that Atla delegates asked me that I had to pause and think about to answer. The first was \u2018Why did you come such a long way\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Conference reports"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/asl\/files\/2024\/04\/Artificial_intelligence.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":721,"url":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/asl\/2024\/04\/01\/ai-theological-libraries-and-me\/","url_meta":{"origin":1128,"position":1},"title":"AI, Theological Libraries \u2026 and me","date":"April 1, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"The University of Edinburgh hosted the Association of British Theological and Philosophical Libraries conference this year at New College on 21-23 March. As usual there was the opportunity for discovering fascinating and historic libraries, including (of course) New College Library, the National Museum of Library of Scotland and the Signet\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Conference reports"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/asl\/files\/2024\/04\/Artificial_intelligence.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":606,"url":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/asl\/2023\/10\/09\/meeting-the-challenges-facing-ecclesiastical-libraries\/","url_meta":{"origin":1128,"position":2},"title":"Meeting the challenges facing ecclesiastical libraries","date":"October 9, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"BETH are a European group of national organisations representing librarians working in theological college, seminary, Church and monastic libraries. Solo librarians or librarians working in small teams are characteristic of their membership, although there is also representation from University libraries. I attended their conference on the theme of Challenges facing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Conference reports"","img":{"alt_text":"Cordoba Mosque \/ Cathedral","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/asl\/files\/2023\/10\/Cathedral.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1112,"url":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/asl\/2025\/08\/22\/what-we-learned-from-our-conferences-academic-support-librarians-and-professional-engagement\/","url_meta":{"origin":1128,"position":3},"title":"What we learned from our conferences : Academic Support Librarians and professional engagement","date":"August 22, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"The Academic Support Librarians are a learning team, who have attended professional development events in line with the prioritised themes in our team workplan. Ishbel Leggat attended the RLUK conference in Liverpool in March, where she learned\u00a0 \u201chow colleagues at other institutions are embedding AI skills into the curriculum, how\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "ASL stories"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/asl\/files\/2025\/08\/Picture1-300x225.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1074,"url":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/asl\/2025\/07\/05\/challenges-changes-and-collaborations-american-theological-library-association-conference-pittsburgh-june-18-21-2025\/","url_meta":{"origin":1128,"position":4},"title":"Challenges, Changes and Collaborations\u2013 American Theological Library Association conference, \u00a0Pittsburgh June 18-21 2025","date":"July 5, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"I was delighted to be invited to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania this year to speak at the Atla 2025 Annual meeting. It\u2019s actually the second time I have been to a library conference in Pittsburgh \u201cthe steel city\u201d, the first was to an ARLIS art librarians conference over 20 years ago. This\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "ASL stories"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/asl\/files\/2025\/07\/Steps-300x225.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":541,"url":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/asl\/2023\/06\/21\/critical-approaches-to-libraries-calc-2023\/","url_meta":{"origin":1128,"position":5},"title":"Critical Approaches to Libraries (CALC) 2023","date":"June 21, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"I attended the CALC Conference on 24th and 25th May and can thoroughly recommend this annual event to other professionals interested in critical librarianship. The gathering was welcoming and introduced the day by stating \u201cwe will operate within a spirit of liberation at this conference\u201d. If you have not heard\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Conference reports"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/asl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1128"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/asl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/asl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/asl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/asl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1128"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/asl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1139,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/asl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1128\/revisions\/1139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/asl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/asl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/asl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}