by Mia Fierros
Summer 2025 Information Literacy Intern
“How much do you know about AI?”
“Uh, as much as the next person,” I unconfidently replied. Out of all the questions I prepared to answer on the first day of my new position, this was not one of them. Now, I think I’d know what to say.
I’m Mia, a student in UCLA’s Library Science graduate program, future Gen Z librarian, and Broome Library's Summer 2025 Information Literacy (IL) Instruction intern. As an IL intern, I am learning to create library teaching tools for CI students, and my first assignment is to make a video tutorial on OneSearch’s new AI Research Assistant.
Before this assignment, I was only familiar with AI’s drawbacks, like its tendency to hallucinate information and environmental hazards, so I was hesitant to use generative AI tools. However, AI tools are seeping into library practices, so regardless of my stance on AI, it is beneficial to my success as a librarian to learn about its uses. And so, my introduction to generative AI tools and learning to teach them began. To follow my lead and learn more about how other generative AI tools work and their ethical concerns, check out our AI Research Guide.
The first leg of the video creation journey was learning about the tool. I learned the OneSearch AI Research Assistant helps you summarize research, letting you ask questions to find related scholarly work directly from the CSUCI library catalog—no made-up sources here! You can just ask it questions how you normally speak! So instead of searching keywords like “Borderlands,” "Latino," and “literature,” you just ask the AI Assistant, “What do the Borderlands represent in Latino literature?” Cool, right?!
The AI Assistant will then pull 5 dissertations, journal articles, and/or books that best match your question and create an Overview using the selected sources’ abstracts. Warning! The AI Assistant does not search Newspaper articles, JSTOR works, or ScienceDirect articles. Search these databases if they are important to your research.
While the AI Overview may seem like a good place to stop, it’s not. The Overview is a summary of the sources’ summaries (or abstracts), so you aren't given important details or the context in which the research was performed. Also, the selected sources aren't the only potential materials that relate to your question, and there's much more available in the library catalog to read in full. Use the AI Assistant as the starting point of a map, not the finishing point.
Like other generative AI tools, the AI Assistant will continue to evolve, with new features being added over time. To learn current and new ways OneSearch’s AI Research Assistant can enhance your research journey, come to Broome Library and ask a librarian for help, check our online chat services, or watch my OneSearch AI Research Assistant video tutorial on YouTube.
References
Broome Library. (2025). Artificial Intelligence Research Guide. https://libguides.csuci.edu/ai
Fierros, M.. (2025, Sep 12). Broome Library AI Research Assistant Tutorial. [Video]. YouTube. Broome Library. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLVHjxT72Ng
Lohr, S. (2024, Aug 27). Will A.I. Ruin the Planet or Save the Planet?. New York Times. https://proquest.ezproxy.csuci.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/will-i-ruin-planet-save/docview/3097327729/se-2
Metz, C., & Weise, K. (2025, May 09). A.I. Hallucinations Are Getting Worse. New York Times. https://proquest.ezproxy.csuci.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/i-hallucinations-are-getting-worse/docview/3201877401/se-2