AI in Library Search: How Harvard Is Testing the Incorporation of AI into Search Functionalities

Chen, Carmen

Source: Dickie, T. (2025, March 11). Harvard Library search tool will understand intent behind the terms. The Harvard Gazette. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2025/03/at-harvard-library-building-a-tool-that-understands/  

Summary:

A Harvard Library team has developed a Collections Explorer tool using generative AI and semantic search technologies to help library search functions determine the intent of a search. Users will now be able to search using natural language instead of using keywords and more complex, unfamiliar search techniques. Search results include explanations of why these results were returned and are a good match to answer the initial question. It also suggests other research questions that may spark new discovery for the user, one they may have not considered before.

Thoughts and Comments:

I think this is an expected integration of AI into the modern library environment. Being able to search for items in a collection by using natural language would be a powerful ability, one that could lower barriers for search since not all library users have the ability to perform searches using complex search techniques (like Boolean search), and since not all keyword searches return relevant items due to the ambiguity of language. I wonder how this Collections Explorer tool takes into consideration these aspects of language then. It would be fantastic if even further down the line, the tool was able to accommodate for different languages.