Report: “As Digital Checkouts Soar, Los Angeles Libraries Pivot to AI Education”

From the Yale Daily News

Beyond fighting misinformation, public libraries are stepping up to bridge paywalls. While students often run into paid barriers when accessing articles via Google or Google Scholar, public libraries subscribe to expensive digital databases, academic journals, and major news outlets — including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal — to provide free access to local students.

Still, many students have been reluctant to get help from the librarians.

“It’s quite common that when they come to this desk to ask a question, they say to me, ‘Oh, I’m really sorry to bother you,’” Charles [a Young Adult Librarian in LAPL’s Teen’scape department] said. “It’s not a bother — that’s literally the whole reason us librarians are here to help.”

As students turn more and more from the paper pages to the digital screens of their research materials, physical library areas are not only continuing to exist, but actively evolving to meet the needs of new research methods.

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