Library and Information Science

Include the following information in your prompt for better results:

• Content: What do you want? 
  • Example: Describe the basic skills a nurse should have.
• Context: In what context should it be used?
  • Example: The text is intended to be an introduction to a course book for nursing students.
• Tone: What is the desired tone and level of your response?
  • Example: It should be informative, pedagogical, and complete.
• Form: What output/form do you want the answer in?
  • Example: and should have a structure including sub-headings and paragraphs.

If you want to learn more about prompts, you can, for example, take a look at Google's pages on "Prompt engineering".

And much more.

Being critical of sources is important, and often a challenge, not least in relation to generative AI;

When using Copilot or any other GAI tool to retrieve information, you need to be aware that this information is not always reliable or of high quality. 

This is partly because a GAI-generated text:

• Does not have a specific sender (author or organisation) - so you don't know who or what is behind the text
• Created in real-time, based on the instructions you give it, and what you get is a unique text and a likely answer based on algorithms and the GAI tool's previously learned data
• May be inaccurate, biased, or unethical due to the GAI tool being trained on websites, social media, and other digital platforms that spread false information, hateful, or otherwise harmful messages
• May be outdated due to the GAI tool not having access to updated data 
• May be incorrect because the GAI tool is not trained on sufficient amounts of data in the area you are asking about
• In some cases, presents sources on which the text is based, but these may be irrelevant and the whole text may not be well supported by sources 
• Can be personalised, i.e. provide customised answers based on your past activities

It is therefore important that you make your own assessment of the credibility and relevance of the information by comparing it with other, credible, sources. 

The basic principle is that you should always explain how you have used various AI tools in your work, for example, in the methodology section or in an appendix.

Note, however, that AI is rarely, if ever, treated as a source in the traditional sense.

Why? Because generative AI produces a probable response in the moment, whereas a source is permanent, can be located and revisited, and has a clear author. This means you should not cite facts or information obtained from generative AI with a reference like (ChatGPT, 2025).

If you use ChatGPT, for instance, to get suggestions for useful research methods, you need to proceed by reading and citing the original sources for the method you choose. But you should still describe that you used ChatGPT to gather tips and ideas to work with. In this way, you remain transparent about your AI usage.

Examples of AI use you should account for:

• Discussion partner, to get help understanding course literature or concepts
• Brainstorming, developing research questions or problem statements
• Administrative purposes (sorting, transcribing, calculations etc.)
• Linguistic assistance (translation, grammar, terminology) — Note: You may not submit AI-generated text as if it were your own work. Make sure to follow your instructor's guidelines on AI usage, as what is allowed may vary between different courses and assignments.
• Material creation (generating images, figures, tables, code)

Specify which tools you used, including URLs and additional relevant information such as free/paid versions, and describe how they were used in the work process and final product.

If you are unsure about what constitutes permitted usage of AI — ask your teacher!

AI-generated images are copyright-free if you created them yourself. This means that you can use the images you created with GAI freely, unless the terms of use say otherwise.

If you need images to illustrate or clarify something in your work and you can't find images that are free to use, don’t want to go to the trouble of asking permission to use copyrighted works, or can’t make your own illustrations, you can try creating something with the help of GAI.

However, successfully generating an image that looks the way you want it to can be a challenge, and clear and well-formulated prompts are needed to get the right style and content of the image. Pictures of people can be particularly difficult to get right.

Here we have prompted Microsoft Copilot/DALL-E as follows to create an image that can be used to illustrate photosynthesis:

"a green sprout is in the middle of the image, roots going down in the soil, above the sprout is the sun and a raincloud"

Keep in mind that: Even if the images are free to use, you should indicate where they come from and that they are created with AI.

Did you know that it takes as much energy to create a single image with GAI as it does to charge a mobile phone?

Text generation is energy-efficient in comparison, but the electricity consumption of AI companies is still something to consider, not least from a global perspective. Read more about electricity consumption and GAI in this article from MIT Technology Review.

Do you want to deepen your understanding of how artificial intelligence works and how you can use it?

You can take this open web-based course at https://www.elementsofai.se
It is also possible to apply for the course as a distance course at Linköping University and receive 2 higher education credits (HE) for completing the course.

There are many niche services where you can search for academic material using AI and more are emerging all the time.

At the moment, the University of Borås library has subscriptions to the following:

• Primo Research Assistant
•  Scopus AI

If you're curious and want to try it out for yourself, here are some suggestions for services that are more or less free to use. Often the tools can be used for free with limited functionality or with a limited number of prompts.

• Consensus
• Perplexity
• Semantic scholar
• Elicit
• Inciteful

Please note that the University Library does not provide support for tools not included in our subscriptions.

These are some tools that can generate both text and images.

Creating an account often grants extended functionality.

This guide provides good ideas on how you can use generative AI (GAI) to improve your writing and learning and deepen your understanding of the subjects you study:

• A student´s Guide to Writing with ChatGPT