Automatable

A task performed by Librarians and Media Collections Specialists

Search standard reference materials, including online sources and the Internet, to answer patrons' reference questions.

Red LightAI can do it · workers don't want it

Technically, much of it, experts rate AI capability 4/5, but workers don't want it automated (desire 2.33/5). It's an Automation Red Light: proceed with care.

Worker desire to automate2.3/5

How much the people who do this task want AI to take it over (avg of 6 workers).

AI capability today4.0/5

How capable experts rate current AI at this task (avg of 3 experts).

How much human involvement should stay?

The Human Agency Scale (H1–H5) captures how much human direction workers think this task should keep.

H3Equal human–AI partnership

Why workers feel the way they do

  • Frees up time for higher-value work17%
  • It's repetitive17%
  • Helps handle larger scale17%

How to automate this

Doable with technology, but keep a person clearly in charge.

Finding & gathering information

Make the information come to you on a schedule.

  1. 1Set up saved searches and alerts instead of checking manually (Google Alerts, feeds).
  2. 2Pull updates into one place with RSS or a no-code scraper.
  3. 3Use an AI search tool for the first pass, then verify the sources.

Tools that can help

Google Alerts / RSSBrowse AIPerplexity

Know a better way, or spot an error?

Share how you automate this in real life, or correct the data. Reviewed before publishing.

This is 1 of 9 tasks studied for Librarians and Media Collections Specialists, where workers want 33% of tasks automated.

Other Red Light tasks