Putting human-centered AI on the global stage for libraries, archives, and museums
By Nicholas Johnson, inaugural Director of Artificial Intelligence, Stony Brook University Libraries
Stony Brook University Libraries is proud to announce that we have joined AI4LAM — the international community for Artificial Intelligence for Libraries, Archives, and Museums — as a founding member. By joining AI4LAM, SBU Libraries takes its place alongside a growing alliance of leading cultural heritage and knowledge institutions from around the world, including the National Library of Norway, Stanford University Libraries, the British Library, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Yale University Library, the University of Michigan Library, Leiden University Libraries, the Rijksmuseum, and the Europeana Foundation, among many others.
This is more than an organizational milestone. It is a public commitment — to our students, faculty, and staff, and to colleagues around the world — that the future of AI in our libraries will be built collaboratively, openly, and with people firmly at the center.
What AI4LAM Is, and Why It Matters
AI4LAM grew out of a 2018 partnership between the National Library of Norway and Stanford University Libraries, and has since developed into an international membership organization hosted in Oslo and led by Secretary General Dr. Ines Vodopivec. Today it brings together dozens of founding institutions in working groups and regional chapters dedicated to advancing trustful, responsible, open, and community-driven AI. Its flagship convening, Fantastic Futures 2026: Trust in the Loop, will be hosted in Washington, D.C., this September — a theme that resonates deeply with our own approach at Stony Brook.
For SBU Libraries, joining AI4LAM means a seat at the table where shared tools, evaluation frameworks, ethical guidelines, and best practices for AI in libraries, archives and cultural heritage are being defined. It means pooled expertise on the technical and policy questions that no single institution can resolve alone ranging from copyright and data stewardship to model evaluation, metadata enrichment, and discovery. And it means lasting relationships with international colleagues working through the same questions we are.
Taking a Human-Centered AI Approach
Stony Brook’s investment in this work is reflected in the recent creation of an inaugural Director of Artificial Intelligence role within the Libraries — a position designed to coordinate AI strategy, services, and partnerships across the organization, and to represent SBU Libraries in communities like AI4LAM. SBU Libraries brings a deliberately human-centered approach to AI to this global community, and one that treats artificial intelligence as infrastructure in service of scholarship, equity, stewardship, and academic integrity, not as a substitute for human judgment.
Our Advancing Trustworthy and Human-Centered AI approach positions the Libraries as both a space for experimentation and a service provider supporting AI in research, teaching, and library operations. That strategic vision is organized around three commitments that map closely onto AI4LAM’s values:
- Innovating responsible AI services — including secure, on-premise access to large language models and GPU resources, AI-enabled discovery for our special collections, and guidance on copyright, data stewardship, and the responsible scholarly use of AI.
- Advancing research and knowledge creation — partnering with faculty across disciplines, conducting research on the social, ethical, and technical implications of AI, and curating high-quality datasets and metadata that trustworthy AI systems depend on.
- Building AI literacies and community — cultivating critical AI literacies across campus through hands-on workshops, experiential learning, and the Library AI Club, a supportive space where library faculty and staff can experiment together.
This work is grounded in real partnerships across the Stony Brook community, reflected in projects ranging from Rubo, our forthcoming embodied AI robot for campus support, to our role as a charter participant in JSTOR’s Digital Stewardship Services program shaping AI-powered access to special collections. Additionally, SBU Libraries has launched a new Library AI Steering Committee to support governance across the organization, as well as developed statements on AI use to promote transparent AI implementation. Throughout this work, the through-line is the same: AI should strengthen scholarly work, expand access to information, and amplify human expertise — never replace it.
What Comes Next
Joining AI4LAM gives us a structured way to share what we are learning at Stony Brook and to learn faster from peers doing the same work in different national, institutional, and disciplinary contexts. In the months ahead, SBU Libraries will participate in AI4LAM working groups, contribute to community calls and open documentation, and look for opportunities to collaborate on cross-institutional research — including around AI evaluation, AI literacies, and ethical use of cultural heritage and scientific data.
To our students, faculty, and staff, this is your invitation to participate. The questions AI4LAM is asking are the questions our campus is asking. We would love your voice in shaping the answers.
To our new AI4LAM colleagues around the world: thank you for the welcome. We are honored to join you, and we are eager to get to work — together, thoughtfully, and with people at the center.
To learn more about AI at SBU Libraries or to get involved, contact Nicholas Johnson, Director of Artificial Intelligence at Stony Brook University Libraries, at nicholas.e.johnson@stonybrook.edu. Learn more about AI4LAM at ai4lam.org.
Nicholas Johnson
