UCSF Library

Background 

Over the past two years, the Library has experienced a sharp rise in questions about generative artificial intelligence (AI). Students, faculty, and staff are increasingly exposed to AI-powered databases and tools and seek guidance on whether these tools can be used responsibly. At the same time, the institution has made substantial investments in AI infrastructure and actively promotes AI adoption across a wide rangeof use cases. Within this environment, Library staff identified a need for coordinated training that moves beyond promotion and instead offers a critical and practical perspective to build AI literacy in the campus community.

Description

Between November 2025 and May 2026, the Library offered a six-session workshop series designed to support university students, faculty, and staff in critically examining the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in their professional practice. The series was taught by staff from across the Library and alternated between hands-on workshops and facilitated discussions focused on critical and ethical dimensions ofAI. The discussions focused on the environmental impact of AI, AI trustworthiness and bias in AI. The workshops covered AI tools for literature searching, AI as tutor and AI as writing editor. Workshops emphasized experiential learning, allowing participants to experiment with AI tools while reflecting on their appropriateness for specific tasks and contexts. Discussion-based sessions encouraged participants to consider broader implications of AI adoption, including sustainability, equity, and professional responsibility. By combining practical skill development with critical inquiry, the series positioned the Library as a trusted, neutral space for exploring AI in a rapidly evolving institutional landscape.

Conclusion 

Although the series is still ongoing, early response has been overwhelmingly positive. The first two sessions—a discussion on the environmental impact of AI and a hands-on workshop on AI tools for literature searching—each attracted more than 100 registrants. Following the series announcement, several faculty groups contacted the Library to request additional information about generative AI services and to schedule presentations for their departments. Internally, the program has fostered new collaborations among Library staff from multiple teams, strengthening shared expertise around AI instruction and consultation. These early outcomes suggest strong demand for critically informed, library-led engagement with generative AI and highlight the Library’s evolving role in supporting responsible AI use across the institution.

Background 

In 2022 Library staff launched a project to enhance inclusive library teaching practices and foster collaboration among library educators. This project stemmed from a larger theme in the Library’s 2020-2025 strategic plan that aimed to build the reputation of library staff as essential campus educators. The key objectives of the project were to establish a community of practice for library educators, and develop a comprehensive guide to equitable teaching in the Library.

Description 

The project team brought together librarians and staff from across the Library, representing diverse teaching expertise and education backgrounds. The team met monthly from late 2022 to the end of 2025 to develop the project goals, plan the Library Educators Community of Practice meetings, and design and launch the Equitable Teaching Guide. The first major milestone was the creation of the Library Educators Community of Practice, a bi-monthly meeting to foster collaboration and solidarity of library staff through structured meet-ups and unstructured discussions. Guided by input from Library staff the project team hosted 13 meetups from 2023-2025 with topics ranging from disability accommodations, to universal design for learning, to how AI is changing our teaching. The second milestone focused on developing an inclusive teaching guide that collects best practices from library staff to create equitable and inclusive learning environments. The team conducted research on existing guides and solicited input from library staff to create a repository of best practices, workflows, templates, and instructional resources. To evaluate their work on the milestones the team solicited iterative feedback on community programming and performed ongoing assessment of guide use.

Conclusions 

The response to both of the project initiatives has been strong. The Library Educator meetups generally include 9-16 attendees, representing a substantial percentage of teaching staff. The guide was officially launched in October of 2025, and at the time of abstract submission has received 25 views. To continue the project goals past the end of the project term the team created a sustainability plan. Two new members were selected to coordinate the sessions for the Library educators community of practice, with the intention that these roles rotate each year. One team member took on the role of maintaining and continuing to solicit content for the guide, with the idea that this would also be a rotating role.

Open science, the movement to open up the products of scientific research, has the potential to make biomedical research more transparent, reproducible, and equitable. However, as research practices and requirements evolve we are faced with new ethical questions around data ownership, participant consent, and paywalls. This talk will give an overview of the current state of open science in biomedical research and hopefully spark a dialogue about the ethics of practicing science in the open.

The Library, Graduate Division, and Open Science Group at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) collaborated in the Fall of 2019 on a credit-bearing workshop series on biomedical reproducibility. The series was targeted at UCSF graduate students and researchers and designed to satisfy NIH Rigor and Reproducibility requirements. In addition to covering open data, open code, open protocols, and open access, this workshop series included sessions on designing rigorous experiments, engaging with new forms of peer review, and building a reproducible lab. The goal of this project was for subject experts to provide hands-on training that will improve research workflows, stimulate conversations about open science and research reproducibility, and build an open curriculum that can be replicated by other institutions. This talk describes this innovative workshop series and reports on pre-workshop assessments of researchers' knowledge and behaviors regarding reproducibility.

Presented at the 2019 Medical Library Association Conference. 

Objective

Impostor phenomenon is the inability to internalize accomplishments while experiencing the fear of being exposed as a fraud. Impostor phenomenon can have serious adverse effects including: anxiety, depression, lack of confidence, decreased job satisfaction and performance, and burnout. Our research objective is to discover effective coping strategies to help health sciences librarians address feelings of impostor phenomenon.

Methods

In our study, the first to measure impostor phenomenon in health science librarians, we distributed an anonymous online survey via REDCap to measure impostor phenomenon among US health sciences librarians and learn about strategies to cope with impostor phenomenon. We used the Harvey Impostor Phenomenon scale (higher scores are associated with feelings of fraudulence) and asked two open-ended questions about coping with feelings of inadequacy at work. The first question asked what strategies respondents used to address these feelings, and the second asked how effective the respondents believed the strategies were. We performed a thematic analysis of the responses to the open-ended questions. 

Results

Our study found that one in seven health sciences librarians experienced impostor phenomenon and, importantly, younger and newer librarians had higher impostor scores. 703 participants completed the survey, of those, 459 answered the open-ended questions. Participants reported many strategies to cope with feelings of inadequacy; 75% reported their strategies were effective. We categorized strategies as either “external” (seeking help outside oneself) or “internal” (coping alone). External strategies include: educational opportunities, mentorship, and talking to others. Internal strategies include: avoidance, “fake it til you make it”, or mindfulness. We found that external strategies were associated with lower impostor scores. 

Conclusions

Feelings of impostor phenomenon can be harmful to those who experience them. Individual librarians, managers, and professional organizations all have a role in addressing impostor phenomenon in the profession. Recognizing the signs of impostor phenomenon and understanding the most effective strategies to cope with it, such as mentoring, colleague support, and educational efforts, are beneficial to health sciences librarians, particularly to younger or newer librarians who experience more feelings of impostorism. 

Learning Outcomes:

Participants will be able to define impostor phenomenon.Participants will be able list 2-3 coping strategies to address impostor phenomenon.Participants will be able to describe the difference between external and internal coping strategies.

Presented at the 2019 Medical Library Association Conference.

Background

The #metoo movement has facilitated national conversations about sexual violence, including workplace sexual harassment. Although anecdotal evidence suggests that many library workers experience sexual harassment, no comprehensive studies exist and no professional guidelines or recommendations are available for those interested in creating change in their libraries. How do we begin these conversations in our profession and our libraries?

Description

This talk will describe several recommendations for starting the process of addressing sexual harassment in your library. These recommendations are based on recent work done by the Sexual Harassment Task Force at UCSF Library, including a library-wide survey to explore staff experiences of sexual harassment and educational efforts based on these survey results.  

Conclusions

The purpose of this talk is to empower library workers to start conversations about sexual harassment in their libraries.

At the end of this session, attendees will be able to:

1. Describe key considerations for beginning the process of addressing sexual harassment in your library environment.

2. Recognize challenges library workers face in starting conversations about sexual harassment in their libraries. 

3. Design a plan for starting conversations about sexual harassment in your library.

Presented at the 2019 Association of College and Research Libraries Conference.

Sexual harassment in libraries exists, but it has not been comprehensively studied. In the wake of the #MeToo movement and shared anecdotal experiences, library staff members at the University of California, San Francisco were empowered to address this issue in our library. This paper will present the results of our survey of sexual harassment experiences of our staff and, in an effort to encourage other academic library workers to spearhead similar efforts in their own environments, will document our process of developing anti-sexual harassment efforts in our library.

Presented at the 2018 Medical Library Association Conference.

Objective

Imposter phenomenon is the inability to internalize accomplishments while experiencing the fear of being exposed as a fraud. Despite informal discussion and interest among the medical librarian community, no research has been conducted on this topic within our field.  Our research objective is to measure imposter phenomenon (IP) among US health sciences librarians.

Methods

In this mixed methods study, a census of all eligible Medical Library Association members, excluding students, retired members, unemployed members, and international members, was taken from October to December 2017. The census population was 2179, and 325 responses (15%) were expected. We administered an anonymous online survey using REDCap, featuring the Harvey Imposter Phenomenon scale, open-ended questions about coping strategies to address imposter phenomenon at work, and demographic information. Demographic variables included race, gender, age, type of library setting, years of experience, and educational background in the health sciences.  

Results

Results are pending. We hypothesize that imposter phenomenon will be greater in librarians with less work experience, younger librarians, and those without a health sciences educational background.  Descriptive statistics will be used to look for trends and bivariate analyses will be used to examine relationships between imposter phenomenon measurements and other variables (e.g. type of library setting). Thematic analysis will be used to discover themes among strategies for addressing imposter phenomenon.

Conclusions

Conclusions are pending; we will have conclusions to present by May 2018. Our conclusions will help inform awareness-raising and advocacy efforts around this issue.

Presented at the 2017 Charleston Conference.

Presented at the 2017 San Jose State University Open Access Conference.