DEIB

Posting this here in addition to the School Library group because I think there are DEIB takeaways from the 1st breakout session too!

I attended CCLI 2026: Library Instruction in Changing Times at CSU Monterey Bay. CCLI is a committee of academic instruction librarians in Northern California who aim to support instruction librarians’ professional development needs. The theme of this year’s annual conference was how to reimagine library instruction to “keep pace with changing times…and actively shape a more inclusive, informed and hopeful future.” 

I attended the keynote address, “Libraries as Bridges to Critical AI Literacy,” three workshop/breakout sessions on AI, and poster sessions on various related topics. I found the most meaningful, relevant sessions to be: (1) “When AI Reinscribes Empire: Libraries as Spaces of Counter-Pedagogy” and (2) “From CRAAP to CRITICAL: Updating Information LIteracy for the Age of AI.” 

When AI Reinscribes Empire: Libraries as Spaces of Counter-Pedagogy

My biggest takeaway from this breakout session is that we should critically evaluate AI-generated content because the information sets that train Large Language Models (LLMs) can pull from biased sources. Each of the lectures blew me away, from 1. “Colonial Archive of AI: How colonial logics structure today's AI systems” to 2. “Libraries: Complicity & Resistance” and 3. “Toward Liberatory Literacy.” I found the workshop activity eye-opening as well, during which we analyzed AI-generated text alongside training dataset metadata to surface hidden biases.

During the workshop, I analyzed “Example B: African History” in which Chatgpt was prompted to share a brief summary of African History. The paragraph excluded multiple African perspectives and centered white narratives, as evidenced by the dataset metadata which confirmed that 92% of the sources Chatgpt pulled from were Western academic encyclopedias, and only 3% were African-published. Even more shockingly, Chatgpt was trained to provide “quality assurance,” which entailed non-Western frameworks being flagged as “potentially biased.”

From CRAAP to CRITICAL: Updating Information Literacy for the Age of AI 

My biggest takeaway from this poster session is that multiple information literacy frameworks/models exist in the field of Library Information & Science (LIS), all with the overarching goal of educating individuals on how to accurately assess information sources' credibility, quality, reliability and more. The “CRITICAL” framework draws from other existing LIS models and specifically caters to digital literacy with the increase in AI-generated content. 

This PD learning experience impacts my work by connecting to my goal(s) for this year: to support students’ information literacy, analyze the impact of AI on LIS, and regularly center diverse voices. This opportunity could lead to collaborative learning with other faculty on how to navigate information-seeking during the age of AI. I might not recommend this opportunity to others because while I found some sessions insightful and was able to make the learning experience relevant, I discovered after attending that the CCLI conference is more geared toward university librarians.