AI SESSIONS

AI FOUNDATIONS FOR YOUR LIBRARY TEAM
A Four-Part Training Kit for Your Entire Staff
with Crystal Trice

Four 30-minute, library-specific AI sessions, taught live once and then available as recordings, with facilitator’s guides for local discussion.

OVERVIEW

Most library staff have already used AI, or been asked about it by a patron, without anyone ever explaining what it is. Confidence with AI often runs well ahead of actual understanding. At the same time, many staff have stopped paying attention to AI altogether, even as patron questions keep coming.

AI Foundations for Your Library Team is designed to get an entire staff to a shared starting point. The content starts with the basics and is library-specific. For staff who already use AI, the sessions provide an opportunity to slow down, reflect on their habits, and strengthen their practice with new strategies for evaluating, prompting, and using AI responsibly. It doesn't assume anyone has used these tools before, and it doesn't try to talk anyone into using them. Breaking the material into four shorter sessions gives people time to absorb the ideas, discuss them with coworkers, and come back with better questions.

The four sessions are taught together in one live two-hour session and recorded. Afterward, your library receives four separate recordings, one for each session, plus facilitator’s guides for local discussion. Staff can participate live, watch the recordings together, or watch individually and discuss afterward.

The goal is to give your staff enough shared understanding to ask better questions, make better judgments, and help patrons navigate AI with confidence.

HOW THE TRAINING WORKS

One live delivery separated into four recordings for local discussion. The four 30-minute sessions are taught together in one live two-hour session on September 16. The full session is recorded and made available afterward as four separate recordings.

Local conversation: After each session, a facilitator at your library leads a 20 to 30 minute discussion using the included facilitator’s guide. The guides provide discussion questions, suggested timing, and guidance for handling questions that come up.

Your library can have staff participate in the live session on September 16, or you can use the recordings in any of these ways (or combine them):

• Watch one recording at each of four existing staff meetings, then discuss
• Have staff watch the recordings individually and schedule a group discussion afterward
• Watch all four recordings together during a staff development day
• Use the recordings later for new-hire onboarding
• Run the local discussions more than once if you have branches or split shifts

You can mix and match these approaches based on your schedule and staffing.

The group licenses cover as many internal showings as you need during the year, so the training can remain useful as staff schedules change and new people join your team.

THE FOUR SESSIONS

Session 1: What AI Actually Is
The basics in plain language, along with a few ideas that tend to surprise people. What AI tools are doing when they generate a response and what they aren't doing.

Session 2: What Can Go Wrong
Made-up sources, confident wrong answers, bias, privacy, and the assumptions patrons walk in with. We look at risks for libraries and how to talk about them without either alarm or dismissal.

Session 3: Using AI Well
Practical prompting, plus the habits that separate useful AI work from sloppy AI work. How to ask for pushback instead of agreement, when to verify, and how to reflect on your AI work habits.

Session 4: Helping Patrons with AI
What to say when a patron asks whether they can trust it, hands you a list of books that don't exist, feels pressured to use AI, or wants to know when the robots are taking over. Real patron questions, practical responses, and language staff can use at the desk the very next day.

Live training date: Wednesday, September 16, 2026 - 2:00 - 4:30 pm US-Eastern Time
The live event lasts approximately 2½ hours, including short breaks between sessions.

WHO SHOULD FACILITATE

Facilitator guides are written so that anyone can lead a session without knowing much about AI going in. Options worth considering:

• A staff member who's curious about AI and has been reading on their own
• A thoughtful skeptic. They often ask the questions others are thinking, and nobody assumes they're trying to sell AI.
• Someone who's good at running meetings, regardless of what they know about AI
• A different person for each session, so no one has to carry all four
• Two people together, which takes pressure off both
• A supervisor, who also doesn’t have to be the AI expert in the room

WHAT YOUR TEAM WILL GAIN

• A shared understanding of AI. When conversations about AI policy or practice come up, staff will start from the same foundation instead of spending the first twenty minutes defining terms.
• Better judgment. Staff will understand enough about AI to recognize what it does well, where it breaks down, and when human expertise still matters.
• Confidence in patron conversations.
  Practical language for responding when a patron asks if AI can be trusted, brings in information that isn't accurate, or feels pressured to use AI.
• Confidence saying, "I'm not sure—let's find out together."
  Staff don't need to have every answer. They'll understand where uncertainty belongs, how to evaluate AI's claims, and how to model good information literacy for patrons.
• Less fear. Less hype. Better decisions.
  Instead of reacting to AI with anxiety or dismissal, staff will have the knowledge they need to make thoughtful, informed decisions in their daily work.

WHO THIS IS FOR

Whole library staffs, at any level of interest or experience. Circulation, reference, youth services, technical services, pages, facilities, and administration, not only the people who volunteer for the AI committee. It should work for the staff member who's been experimenting with AI since 2023 and the one who's planning to wait it out until retirement.

If you're a staff of one or two, the individual tier covers you. Small libraries field the same patron questions as large ones, usually without anyone down the hall to ask.

Public, academic, school, and special libraries all fit. The examples lean public, but the content applies anywhere staff are answering questions at a desk.

A SHARED STARTING POINT, WITH ROOM FOR LOCAL CONVERSATION

Every staff member gets the same foundation in AI. Each library gets to decide when and how to talk about what that means for its own staff, patrons, and community.

The training provides the shared content. The facilitator’s guides help bring that content back to your library, where staff can ask questions, compare experiences, and work through the issues that matter most to them.

PRICING

One purchase covers your entire library for a year, based on staff size. All orders and inquiries should be made to admin@library20.com.

In determining your tier, count people, not FTE. A library reporting 10 FTE often has closer to 20 actual humans on the schedule, and all of them should have access.

The group tiers include live attendance, four session recordings, facilitator's guides, and one year of access. During that year, use the training as often as you need with anyone on your staff, including people you hire after you purchase. The individual tier can attend the live session and will receive a single two-hour recording and guide for individual use only.

State libraries, regional systems, and consortia: member-wide licensing is available and is usually the most affordable way to reach small libraries across a region. Get in touch for a quote.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Do staff have to attend the September 16 live session? No. The live session is an opportunity to participate in the training as it’s taught, but it is not required. Afterward, the four sessions will be available as separate recordings, along with the facilitator’s guides. Libraries can use the recordings together or individually and schedule their discussions when it works for their staff.

Does the live session cover all four topics? Yes. All four 30-minute sessions are taught sequentially during the two-hour live session, with short breaks in between.

When will the recordings and facilitator’s guides be available? After the September 16 live session. The training will be packaged as four separate recordings, one for each session, with the facilitator’s guides available alongside them.

Can staff watch the recordings together? Absolutely. You can use them during existing staff meetings, professional development days, or other staff gatherings. You can also have staff watch individually and come together afterward for the discussion.

Do we have to run all four sessions? No. They're sequenced on purpose and Session 1 lays the groundwork for the rest, but each one holds up by itself.

What if nobody on our staff feels qualified to facilitate? The guides are written for exactly that situation. Each one walks through what to expect, where discussions tend to stall, and how to handle questions you can't answer as a facilitator. You do not need to be an AI expert.

Can we use this for new hire onboarding? Yes, throughout your license year. Anyone who joins your staff during that year can watch the recordings and go through the material, at no additional cost.

What do I get with individual access? The individual option is designed for people who want to take the training themselves, including those who are considering bringing it to their library or organization. You can attend the live two-hour session on September 16, and afterward you'll receive the full two-hour recording plus a reflection guide with journaling questions and prompts for personal use. If you later purchase the training for your organization, you'll receive the facilitator's guides to use with your staff.

Does this training focus on a particular AI tool?
We demonstrate concepts using familiar AI tools, but the goal is to build understanding rather than teach a particular platform. The principles apply regardless of which AI tools your library chooses to use.

Will this convince our skeptics to use AI? The content is not designed to convince everyone to use AI. The goal is for everyone to understand the technology well enough to help patrons and take part in library decisions about it.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER

CRYSTAL TRICE

Crystal Trice is a librarian, consultant, and trainer who helps libraries navigate artificial intelligence with confidence, curiosity, and good judgment. Before founding Scissors & Glue, LLC, she spent more than 25 years working in libraries and education, giving her firsthand experience with the realities of public service, staff training, and patron questions.

She has helped more than 15 library leadership teams develop practical, mission-aligned approaches to AI through Library 2.0's ten-week AI Leadership Cohort, guiding organizations through policy development, staff engagement, ethical decision-making, and strategic planning. Crystal also led a six-month artificial intelligence consultancy for the Southeast Florida Library Information Network (SEFLIN), supporting four library systems through staff surveys, training, coaching, and policy development. 

She regularly presents to library audiences across the country on artificial intelligence, helping thousands of library professionals understand what AI is, where it fits, where it doesn't, and how to make thoughtful decisions that reflect library values. Her approach isn't about convincing people to use AI. It's about helping library staff understand it well enough to serve patrons confidently and participate in informed conversations about the future of their libraries.

Crystal holds a Master's Degree in Library & Information Science, a Bachelor's Degree in Elementary Education and Psychology, and is a Certified Scrum Master.