Artificial Intelligence Initiatives
Northeastern University Library (NUL) stands at the forefront of digital transformation in teaching, learning, research, and scholarly communication. NUL envisions a future where artificial intelligence serves as a catalyst for intellectual discovery, enhancing scholarly pursuits while deeply rooted in core library values of accessibility, equity, and critical inquiry, and truth-seeking. Through strategic external partnerships and interdisciplinary collaborations, NUL is pioneering AI integrations across numerous domains:
Research & Discovery
Investment in AI-powered information resources
Evaluating the AI information discovery landscape: NUL is actively engaging with vendors and publishers to keep pace with new products and platforms in the AI information discovery landscape. A rolling evaluation of AI-powered features/new interfaces is in place for existing, core resources to critically analyze functionality, develop use cases, and help weigh potential value and associated costs for adoption/integration.
Trialing and licensing resources: Starting in 2023, NUL trialed numerous AI-powered discovery platforms, including Consensus, Elicit, Scite.ai, and Scopus AI (Elsevier). Beginning January 2024, NUL provided access to Scite.ai and Scopus AI.
- Scopus AI: Enter a natural language query and receive results from the largest multidisciplinary abstract and citation database including graphical representations showing connections among keywords, pointers to influential papers, and suggested related queries to further your research.
- Scite.ai was licensed beginning in January ’24 and discontinued in June of 2026 due to declining usage and a need to evaluate a fast-moving landscape for AI-powered information discovery.
Development Partnerships focused on Discovery Solutions
NUL is partnering with Clarivate to transform the Scholar One Search library catalog and develop/pilot AI-powered discovery for library holdings including print books, e-books, journal content, and more: Press Release.
NUL is partnering with Wiley and Anthropic to pilot platforms/tools that increase the use and visibility of scholarly resources in AI-powered search and synthesis: Press Release.
Keeping track of AI Innovations
The Information provides in-depth, breaking news articles about the global technology industry– including the areas of artificial intelligence, venture capital, crypto, start-ups, private equity in the technology space. Enter your @northeastern.edu email address to link your Northeastern credentials.
Scholarly Journals
The Library provides access to numerous journals focused on Artificial Intelligence, including:
- Artificial Intelligence (Elsevier)
- Artificial Intelligence in Engineering (Elsevier)
- Artificial Intelligence Review (Springer)
- Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (Burgberlag)
- Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence (Oxford)
Teaching & Learning
Library AI Modules
NUL created a multi-module learning object that introduces generative AI, explains limitations of generative AI, delves into ethical considerations, helps students evaluate tools and incorporate AI into the research process, and provides tips on using library-licensed AI platforms.
Course Support
When relevant to your course and/or assignment, Research and Instruction Liaisons can address information literacy in the context of generative AI. Due to the constant proliferation of generative AI tools and impossibility of maintaining expertise across all tools used by every college, subject librarians and specialists focus their learning objectives on skills that are transferrable across tools, such as prompt generation and tool evaluation, rather than in-depth demonstrations of a particular tool (except for tools licensed by the Library).
Teaching and Learning Tools
NUL is experimenting with AI-powered teaching tools that help with course preparation and course design and actively prototyping new AI-powered interfaces that help learners scope and refine AI queries for deeper search and discovery.
Grant Funded Initiatives in AI
NUL was a chief collaborator with the Authors Alliance on a grant supported by the Mellon Foundation: Developing a public-interest training commons of books. The grant sought to develop an actionable plan for a public-interest book training commons for artificial intelligence, considering various legal pathways, roles for different stakeholders, and potential governance models. Participants developed guiding principles and goals in 2025. A white paper was released in 2026, setting the stage for future collaboration and conversations with funders.
Digitization & Metadata Creation
Contact: Sarah Sweeney, Head of Digital Production Services
The team continues to refine workflows and quality control processes to verify accuracy of the AI output, all with the goal of ensuring improved discoverability of materials in the Digital Repository Service.
Using Whisper to generate accessible captions for streaming audio and video resources
Leveraging the Gemini API's vision capabilities to create titles and abstracts for photographs
Producing searchable text documents through optical character recognition with Tesseract, Adobe, and Abbyy FineReader.
Producing searchable text documents through optical character recognition with Tesseract, Adobe, and Abbyy FineReader.
AI Interest Group
NUL established the Artificial Intelligence Interest Group in 2024 to examine emerging AI trends and comprehend ways in which AI can transform libraries. The group serves as a valuable forum through which library staff can learn and be inspired to integrate AI into their work.