Generative AI and library skills

In June 2025, UCL Library Services ran a workshop on 'Critical thinking in a GenAI world', as part of UCL's ExtendED Learning opportunities, which focused on using GenAI to summarise information. An optional extension of the workshop was a competition to produce a review of a GenAI summarisation tool. Many thanks to everyone who entered, and especially to those who gave permission for their entry to be showcased on this page. The entries provide rich insight into using GenAI for summarisation. 

The workshop Critical thinking in a GenAI world: Summaries and sources of information is now offered as part of our regular scheduled programme of Library Skills sessions.

"This workshop was a great experience outside of my usual field, allowing me to explore how AI tools can be used effectively. While I use AI occasionally, this workshop helped me understand how to approach it responsibly."

Fathima Amraa Izni, MSc Obesity and Clinical Nutrition

Winning entry

This piece is my take on a review of GenAI summarisation tools. The title of the work is: "Translation through distortion - Gen AI reshapes meaning. Is it innovation or deviation? It all depends on what you're seeking."

I decided on the format and title of the work after experimenting with Copilot, using some of the scientific articles I had to read. While the outputs often closely resemble the input, the underlying message tends to shift, is reinterpreted and transformed into something entirely new, like an image of its own. I don't think this transformation is necessarily better or worse, its value depends on the context, what we're looking for, and whether the intended objective is achieved.

“The workshop gave me the space to reflect on how GenAI reshapes meaning - sometimes subtly, sometimes drastically - and how that affects the way we communicate and create.”

Karolina Slominska, 3rd year Chemistry Bachelors student.

Runner-up entry

I am an academic visitor coming from China. Due to my work requirements, I have been trying to utilise various GenAI tools in both my classroom teaching and academic research. I personally consider them as empowering tools that can facilitate my work.

In the listed GenAI tools offered by the course, I have tried using several of them on a frequent basis (although not necessarily for the purpose of summarising), such as Grammarly, Quillbot, Perplexity, Smallpdf, etc. 

• As English is my second language, I mainly use Grammarly, Quillbot, or ChatGPT for language refinement on my first draft of writing. The feedback offered served as a second opinion to hone my writing skills.
• Perplexity is a useful tool for a quick grasp of the research topic that I am interested in. The best part is that it provides the authentic source information (journal articles, website information) from which I can check the accuracy of the content it generated or get further detail that interests me.
• For summarization of PDF content, I personally use the plug-in function of ChatGPT in ZOTERO, which is efficient, especially at the phase of literature review. I also recommend combining Feishu and Deepseek, which can summarize the information neatly in a table format.

In this course, I surprisingly discovered a new GenAI tool--NotebookLM. It can generate a conversation based on the core content you put in. I tried upload a PDF version of journal article on Meta-analysis (in English), and after a few minutes, it gave me a podcast-style of conversation between a man and a woman on meta-analysis in Chinese! The tones of the two “speakers” are quite natural, and there are even colloquial words in Chinese dialect. GenAI has managed to break down the hard content and reorganize in a way more comprehensible (with analogies and comparisons). That’s truly amazing!

AI technology is evolving fast, and different AI tools are also sprouting. That’s why this kind of course is particularly important--a platform for sharing and discovering these amazing tools with talented people, so that we may, in the sense of our ancestors mastering using fire, become the masters of tools in the AI age. 

"Mind empowered, tools sharpened—excel with Gen AI."

Ge Xu

Huaqiao University

Affiliated researcher, UCL Department of Experimental Psychology

Highly commended entry