An Award-Winning Conference Paper and An Educational Video that Situate Generative AI in Library and Information Science

February 17, 2026 Jenna Hartel

Jenna Hartel

The paper, “Theorising Notions of Searching, (Re)Sources, and Evaluation in the Light of Generative AI” (Sundin, 2025) won the Best Long Paper Award at the 2025 Conceptions of Library and Information Science (CoLIS) conference in Glasgow, Scotland. For me, reading it sparked a eureka! moment. The author, Olof Sundin, argues that generative AI has a precedent in the European Documentation movement of the early 20^th century. In addition to historical insights, the paper analyzes how today’s search systems increasingly provide answers or facts, whereas conventional retrieval tools point information seekers to sources.

—I believe the video (and its powerful source paper) deserve a spot in every syllabus and course that initiate newcomers into our field—

Enlightened by Sundin’s vision, I returned from CoLIS and immediately began making a video about the paper as the 13^th episode of my What Makes This Paper Great? (WMTPG?) series (Hartel, 2022). I believe the video (and its powerful source paper) deserve a spot in every syllabus and course that initiate newcomers into our field. INFIDEOS subscribers may agree, because it has been the fastest rising video at my channel, reaching 2,000+ views in just a few months. You can watch it right here, or below.

Like all episodes of the WMTPG? series, the video teaches on multiple levels. To begin, there is a birds-eye view and structural analysis of the paper. Its thesis, theoretical framework, method, and sources are revealed. This teacherly approach carries viewers into otherwise deep theoretical and methodological waters. More seasoned scholars who are watching may appreciate that the video provides a blueprint to follow for making impactful conceptual contributions, themselves. (To this same end, see another popular video at INFIDEOS, How To Write a Conceptual Paper.)

Then, the mainstay of the video recounts the paper’s rich content, namely:

Differentiating Sources and Answers. A question, “What is the height of Mount Everest?” illustrates the difference between a source (e.g. a volume of Encyclopedia Britannica) and an answer or fact (e.g. Mount Everest is 29,002 feet high).
Historical Precedents in the European Documentation Movement. Suzanne Briet’s famous “antelope” is shown as the lineage to the search for sources. Paul Otlet’s “universal book of knowledge” is cast as a precursor to the modern drive for extracted answers or facts. This part of the video and paper satisfyingly connect-the-dots across a century of Information Science.
Surveying the Evolution of Search Systems. One vividly illustrated segment of the video is a chronological “whistle-stop tour” through technologies (Shah & Bender, 2021). We see the progression of search infrastructures from library bibliographies –> card catalogs –> OPACS –> web crawlers and engines –> website links. This final output leads to Google’s innovations of Knowledge Graphs and Knowledge Panels, which soften the ground for generative AI.
Challenges for Information Literacy. The paper’s author, Olof Sundin, is an expert and champion in the area of information literacy. Hence, both the video and paper explore the implications of these matters on society, especially for youth as they attempt to evaluate information sources and make sense of the world.
The Stochastic Parrot. A now-famous metaphor (Bender, et al., 2021) in which large language models (LLSs) are likened to a “stochastic parrot” comes to life in the video and in the GIF, below.

The 15 sections of the video are titled as chapters and hyperlinked for easy navigation and potential insertions to classroom lectures.

HYPERLINKED VIDEO TABLE OF CONTENTS
00:00 — Welcome
00:03 — The Featured Paper
00:28 — About the Author, Professor Olof Sundin
00:48 — Outline of the Video
01:13 — The Publication Context and Objective of the Paper
01:51 — Structural Overview and High Level Tour
02:47 — Research Method and Sources
03:30 — Introduction (The Difference Between Sources and Answers)
04:49 — A Sociomaterial Theoretical Framework (With Two Historical Examples)
06:28 — A Technical History of Search
08:35 — Generative AI and Large Language Models
09:11 — Emily Bender’s “Stochastic Parrot”
09:49 — Evaluation of Information (Information Literacy)
11:11 — What Makes This Paper Great?
12:28 — Thanks for Watching

As always, the video concludes by asking: What Makes This Paper Great? I propose you watch the video—right here! —for my answer. Below are thumbnails for the other twelve videos of the series. Please email me at jenna.hartel@utoronto.ca to recommend a great paper to be featured, next.

References

Bender, E. M., Gebru, T., McMillan-Major, A., & Shmitchell, S. (2021). On the dangers of stochastic parrots: Can language models be too big? Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT ’21), 610–623. https://doi.org/10.1145/3442188.3445922

Shah, C., & Bender, E. M. (2021). Situating search. Proceedings of the 2022 Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval (CHIIR ’22), 221–232. https://doi.org/10.1145/3498366.3505816

Hartel, J. [INFIDEOS]. (2021, Nov 28). How Do I Write a Conceptual Paper? [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/4oj2Dia3wls

Hartel, J. (2022, February 22). Introducing the What Makes This Paper Great? series at INFIDEOS. Information Matters, Vol. 2, Issue 2. https://informationmatters.org/2022/02/introducing-the-what-makes-this-paper-great-series-at-infideos/

Hartel, J. [INFIDEOS]. (2025, Jul 11). Episode 13: Theorising Notions of Searching, (Re)Sources, and Evaluation in the Light of Generative AI by Olof Sundin [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/QfcMHv3rI7Y?si=s0vt96GnNWeKoAHt

Sundin, O. (2025). Theorising notions of searching, (re)sources and evaluation in the light of generative AI. Information Research an International Electronic Journal, 30(CoLIS), 291–302. https://doi.org/10.47989/ir30CoLIS52258

Cite this article in APA as: Hartel, J. (2026, February 17). An award-winning conference paper and an educational video that situate generative AI in library and information science. Information Matters. https://informationmatters.org/2026/02/an-award-winning-conference-paper-and-an-educational-video-that-situate-generative-ai-in-library-and-information-science/

Author

Jenna Hartel

I am an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto. As an interdisciplinary social scientist devoted to the field of Library and Information Science (LIS), I conduct research in three related areas: 1) information and the "higher things in life" that are pleasurable and profound; 2) visual and creative research methods; and 3) the history and theory of LIS. In the Master of Information program at the Faculty of Information, I mostly teach graduate students in the Library and Information Science concentration. Both my research and teaching aim to be an imaginative forms of intervention in the field of LIS, through unorthodox projects such as Metatheoretical Snowman, Welcome to Library and Information Science, and the iSquare Research Program. See my website at jennahartel.info or my YouTube Channel, INFideos.

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