Artificial intelligence as an instrument for smarter cataloguing: a prospective dialogue

Empirical evidence suggests that the hiring, training and retaining of cataloguers is increasingly challenging for libraries. While funding and advocacy with upper management and government agencies that prioritise costs without understanding the intricacies of today’s metadata ecosystem is a factor, a lower interest in the traditional competencies of cataloguers seems to be at play as well. Meanwhile, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and related technologies garner interest from decision-makers for their perceived modernity and economic promises, as well as from information professionals who have developed automated metadata processes for decades. In times of economic constraints and a rapidly-changing workforce, apposite use of AI technology is a major factor, and it is incumbent on us to find how best to harness it as an efficient tool addressing the challenges we face. As far as metadata production is concerned, this could mean finding innovative ways of automating “traditional” tasks that production chains still need but cataloguers are less adept at, freeing them for the new tasks that have emerged as the consequence of the evolution of models and standards and where human intervention remains more than ever indispensable. Drawing on French and international experience, this is a dialogue between two seasoned cataloguing and bibliographic models experts who take a prospective look at the recent technological developments and their potential contribution to the challenges faced by cataloguing as a profession. It is our belief that technological progress should be about freeing human intelligence from repetitive and non-meaningful tasks, the better to bring about a world where cataloguers can focus on value-added, smarter tasks. This is how the cataloguing community has used automation in libraries in the past, and there is no reason why this should stop at the newest technologies.