Bot Building: Enhancing Customer Service Using Artificial Intelligence at the Calgary Public Library
From an Urban Library Council Blog Post:
As artificial intelligence seeps into people’s everyday experiences online, people now expect to be able to ask simple questions and receive immediate answers, rather than search through FAQs on a website. Calgary Public Library patrons were coming to expect AI, and library staff saw the opportunity to deploy such technology to improve the ease and convenience of using the library.
Additionally, AI was a way for Calgary Public Library to expand library services and multiply impact. Calgary is a sprawling and fast-growing city, home to over 1.2 million people. To better serve communities across the city, innovative service models are required. By using new technology to answer simple queries, employee time once spent answering these questions can be used differently. Ultimately, AI helps bring the library into more people’s lives.
Filed under: Libraries, News, Patrons and Users, Public Libraries
About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com. Gary is also the co-founder of infoDJ an innovation research consultancy supporting corporate product and business model teams with just-in-time fact and insight finding.
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