Considerations and implications
This section surfaces key reflections from the evaluation, moving beyond tool description to sense-making. It considers how AI may influence library practice, sector responsibilities, and the broader information landscape. As a boundary-spanning part of the university, the Library draws on its expertise in information practice and knowledge management to surface impacts across cohorts.
Our insights are provisional and reflective, emphasising conditions and contexts rather than certainties or prescriptions.
Our role is not to endorse tools like Elicit but to make meaning. To examine how different forms of AI may reshape how information is produced, accessed, and understood. These considerations are part of the academic library’s role in supporting the organisation, interrogation, and circulation of knowledges within our academic contexts.
Click on the plus (+) icons below to explore considerations related to digital literacies, user behaviours and needs, educator capability, open practices, and library practices:
- EBSCO’s AI functionality reflects AI trends in both search and summarisation in other vendor platforms, normalising AI-assisted engagement.
- The in-product functionality provides a level of support in licensed material not available in freemium tools with less transparent workings and data sources.
- Aligns with evolving user expectations for AI-enhanced search tools; disabling such features may push users towards freemium AI search options, bypassing library-subscribed resources, that are less transparent and have more risks to users.
- Natural Language Search
- An opt-in function.
- Uses AI to convert plain language questions into a keyword search and runs it using functions used in traditional search such as relevant ranking.
- AI Insights
- In beta, may change over time.
- Available in both EBSCOhost and EDS.
- Summarises key points from full text.
- Bias in source selection.
- The low proportion of articles with AI Insights may lead users to preferentially select those that do have them. This introduces a risk of bias in source selection, as users may overlook equally relevant or more relevant articles without AI Insights.
- The tools can be used without understanding how information is produced, stored, or organised, which limits digital literacy development.
- Users are likely to satisfice—settling for the first acceptable result—rather than optimise their search.
- While satisficing is sometimes appropriate, knowing when to go deeper requires evaluative judgement.
- Exclusive use of Natural Language Search may prevent users from developing the evaluative skills needed to optimise when necessary.
- Natural Language Search may reduce the number of user enquiries if it has a high uptake and provides relevant results.
- Users seeking direct answers may still prefer generative AI tools that provide both answers and sources, potentially bypassing embedded tools like those in EBSCO.
- The increased ease of use of the tools may result in fewer Library service enquiries, while the remaining enquiries could be more complex, as simpler questions are resolved independently.
- Search skill gaps
- Users relying on Natural Language Search may not develop the skills needed to construct effective Boolean searches which may impact their ability to conduct more complex searching when required.
- In cases where results from Natural Language Search are not relevant to the information need, users may be unequipped to refine their search strategy.
- Highlight the strengths and limitations of search tools in digital literacy education.
- Encourage students to use tools selectively and strategically as part of a thoughtful search process.
- Education can help students understand when and how to use different tools at various stages of research.
- Reinforce critical evaluation skills when interpreting AI outputs in research contexts. As vendor AI tools blur the line between search and summary, users need support to understand when a tool is surfacing data, interpreting content, or shaping conceptual direction.
- Educate users on the purpose and limitations of AI Insight summary points, particularly the risks of relying on summaries without engaging with full-text content.
- AI Insights offer opportunities to teach comparative evaluation: encouraging students to test AI summaries against abstracts and full-texts can build evaluative judgement and highlight the limitations of surface-level AI outputs.
- Instructors need confidence to critique and explain embedded AI functionality across a variety of platforms, not just generative tools like ChatGPT but increasingly common in-product tools like those from ProQuest, EBSCO, or JSTOR.
- A dedicated capability stream on vendor-integrated AI could help staff build fluency in tool function, critique, and pedagogical framing. Thereby enabling more agile teaching interventions and advisory support.
- Professional development programs for information and search professionals should have a scaffolded and specialist AI training stream. Librarians focused on academic and research services need support to respond to changing user behaviours and to confidently deliver updated instructional content that reflects the AI-integrated research environment.
- Instructional framing must shift from “how to use the platform or tool” toward “how to platform or tool mediates information” that acknowledge AI as both a functional layer and a lens.
- EBSCO AI functionality reflects an industry shift in information discovery and is becoming a standard user expectation.
- Libraries should approach in-product AI not as neutral functionality but as an active influence on discovery behaviours and academic habits. Library outreach must include shaping the narrative; clarifying when, why, and how AI should support—and not shortcut—scholarly practices.
- The presence of embedded AI in trusted academic systems may lead to uncritical use if not addressed through deliberate teaching and policy framing.
- Evaluations like this are not only about tool performance; they highlight the behaviours and epistemologies (ways of thinking) these tools promote. Libraries must remain responsive, not reactive, to these developments.