This is a technical thing rather than a comment on the interview - but it came up in my inbox as weird. The sender was listed as "Trezor", rather than Culture Study; and there were some ads for crypto etc. in the body of the text. I didn't click on any links, I just came to substack to access because my first thought was maybe you were hacked? I am so paranoid about phishing scams etc. So I wanted to let you know.
I HAVE ZERO IDEA HOW THIS HAPPENED TRULY WHAT THE FUCK!!! Thank you to everyone who kindly alerted me - I appreciate you and won’t send anything further until I know for sure that it’s been fixed.
I got a very weird bot activity notification last night but it was unclear what it meant….BUT ALSO SO FITTING IF A BOT HACKED A NEWSLETTER WHERE WE TALK SHIT ABOUT BOTS???
The same thing happened to me, and I also noticed that at the bottom of this page, it's listed as (C) 2025 Trezor instead of being copyrighted to you...
Same here. Some additional detail: The sending address was still annehelen+interviews@substack.com, but the contact was listed as Trezor, which is the same company named in the crypto ad.
Praying that Substack isn't forcing ads without creators' consent into their newsletters.
As a former hospital librarian/current academic librarian: just, yes. Yes. Thanks Carrie for talking about this work! I loved being a hospital librarian, but my god it’s tough work (I was also solo, and did that for eight years).
I’m a academic librarian for the humanities and it’s so fascinating how much of this is similar to what I do, and yet how little of it I could do (at least not without extensive training, ha).
This quote really got me:
“And of course bots are actively being developed to do what I do. They do it badly, but I don’t know how much that will matter in the end.” Yeah. Ugh. Gut-punch.
A lot of what I do is teach lower-level students information literacy and it’s soooo much harder now than it used to be because of AI. Google results are trash and none of my usual methods for verifying an internet source’s quality work anymore. Students send me fake citations for articles that don’t exist. As the interviewee pointed out, even library databases are incorporating AI and *their* searches are also getting worse. It’s so incredibly frustrating to see so many librarians either embracing AI or seeing it as an inevitable thing we all have to accept or get left behind when we can all see how both 1. it’s making our jobs harder, and search results and research quality worse, and 2. Tech bros are actively hoping to replace us with AI.
Public librarian here who is currently serving on a committee in my library system to figure out how best we can use/manage/tackle/fight/help our patrons use AI. Because it's there, they are using it, and they don't understand it.
Yeah I don’t try to tell patrons not to use it, much as I want to, but I do try to make sure they actually understand what it is and not just what it’s marketed as being (two VERY different things).
I really really felt this rant deep in my guts! I am a former law librarian (no longer in the field - long story but I've done biglaw and academic law and now have a role outside libraries but still legal information focussed) and this piece and your rant really spoke to me. I am so passionate about the provision of quality information and helping people find accurate info and empowering them to help themselves, and I just feel like it's always been an upward battle but it's now worse than ever. Fuck gen AI, truly
I’m a public children’s librarian and I’m always fascinated by the work librarians do in other fields and how it’s so often unseen and unrecognized. Someone is getting better care because of your work! That’s amazing!
Same! I'm an academic librarian at a public university but I attended the Medical Library Association conference a few years ago. I learned so much! It's not every day I learn about cadaver archives.
Hi! I love this series (and your substack in general). Maybe this is tangentially related to how people organize their days/weeks, but I was thinking it could be interesting to see how small businesses make it work. I'd be curious to know how hair salons, flower shops, cafes, etc. manage to pay their employees, pay rent, etc. Whether they're looking for big ticket orders, or bank on seasonality, or if it's just a matter of consistent volume. I heard Ezra Klein say in a recent podcast (maybe the one with Brian Eno?) that in Japan shops are basically subsidized so they can be more niche than here in the US, which sounds so cool. Anyway, I'd love to know the biggest pain points, what would help make it easier, etc.
I'll try and look for more like this! For now I'd check out the hairstylist interview and the gardening ceramicist interview for how they manage their small businesses — both fascinating
Fellow medical librarian here, thank you for giving me something to point to when people ask about what I do all day! Untangling AI citations is the worst, I feel your pain
This was a fascinating read! I work adjacent to the medical field and am also worried about the ongoing budget cuts and gen AI issues. One thing that's especially tough with the fake citations is that a lot of the authors writing the articles that show up in PubMed are themselves using gen AI to come up with the citations for their work! So it's not just students or patients asking ChatGPT for information and getting fake citations, it's also the actual experts who aren't even bothering to check what they submit for publication. Not good.
Multiple times I have had med students send me a citation and ask me to find them the full text, only for me to have to tell them it’s a hallucinated citation created by whatever AI they used to generate an answer for their question!
This seems oddly topical: I just got an email from EveryLibrary, an organization that helps libraries advocate and organize, indicating that the CDC librarians were among those laid off last week, but unlike many other staff, the librarians are not among those who were almost immediately called back. Sigh. 🤦🏽♀️ Guess we know who’s planning to rely on the bots now.
I love this! I’m a librarian (primarily at law firms). In library school I took a special libraries class, and we had a hospital librarian lead it and another guest speaker talked to our class. So fun!
Legal research and medical research are languages unto themselves. I'm an academic librarian and once tried to muddle through LexisNexis to help a visiting law student. Not easy!
Thanks for this! I did a co-op term at a hospital library during my MLIS studies and it was so, so interesting and even fun. The surgeon would call down and say “I need the procedure for such and such, the patient is with me now” and I just shuddered and hoped the health region had good insurance to cover my work!
I’m a medical school liaison librarian and was nodding at so much of this! I get to work with both doctors who work in our attached healthcare system and teach in our school, and students so I get a huge spectrum of people with differing levels of knowledge about what medical librarians can do.
I never thought about "hospital librarian" being a job before, but it makes total sense that it would be. What an interesting interview to read! Reminded me of when I did some internships in grad school with corporate and hospital art collections, both of which garnered much the same reaction. Lots of people never really stop and think about how all the things on the wall end up there, but getting them there (and keeping track of them, etc.) is absolutely someone's job.
This is a technical thing rather than a comment on the interview - but it came up in my inbox as weird. The sender was listed as "Trezor", rather than Culture Study; and there were some ads for crypto etc. in the body of the text. I didn't click on any links, I just came to substack to access because my first thought was maybe you were hacked? I am so paranoid about phishing scams etc. So I wanted to let you know.
I HAVE ZERO IDEA HOW THIS HAPPENED TRULY WHAT THE FUCK!!! Thank you to everyone who kindly alerted me - I appreciate you and won’t send anything further until I know for sure that it’s been fixed.
I got a very weird bot activity notification last night but it was unclear what it meant….BUT ALSO SO FITTING IF A BOT HACKED A NEWSLETTER WHERE WE TALK SHIT ABOUT BOTS???
The bots, like Michael Jordan, took this personally...
I just love that you documented this whole thing from "I smell smoke" to "is that my dumpster" to "HOLY SHIT IT GOT ME TO SET MY DUMPSTER ON FIRE"
The bottom of this comments page still says (c) Trezor as of early morning on the 16th
https://annehelen.substack.com/p/how-a-hospital-librarian-spends-their/comments
The same thing happened to me, and I also noticed that at the bottom of this page, it's listed as (C) 2025 Trezor instead of being copyrighted to you...
Same here. Some additional detail: The sending address was still annehelen+interviews@substack.com, but the contact was listed as Trezor, which is the same company named in the crypto ad.
Praying that Substack isn't forcing ads without creators' consent into their newsletters.
Same.
Also the copyright at the bottom of the email (not the Substack post) says Trezor rather than AHP.
Same.
Me as well!
Yes me too! After I confirmed the from address and read the interview I got brave (dumb?) and clicked on the little Trezor pic—it brought me here
Me too.
Same here too!
Same here!
Same here
Me three!
And me!
As a former hospital librarian/current academic librarian: just, yes. Yes. Thanks Carrie for talking about this work! I loved being a hospital librarian, but my god it’s tough work (I was also solo, and did that for eight years).
I’m a academic librarian for the humanities and it’s so fascinating how much of this is similar to what I do, and yet how little of it I could do (at least not without extensive training, ha).
This quote really got me:
“And of course bots are actively being developed to do what I do. They do it badly, but I don’t know how much that will matter in the end.” Yeah. Ugh. Gut-punch.
A lot of what I do is teach lower-level students information literacy and it’s soooo much harder now than it used to be because of AI. Google results are trash and none of my usual methods for verifying an internet source’s quality work anymore. Students send me fake citations for articles that don’t exist. As the interviewee pointed out, even library databases are incorporating AI and *their* searches are also getting worse. It’s so incredibly frustrating to see so many librarians either embracing AI or seeing it as an inevitable thing we all have to accept or get left behind when we can all see how both 1. it’s making our jobs harder, and search results and research quality worse, and 2. Tech bros are actively hoping to replace us with AI.
Anyway, thanks for reading my rant.
Public librarian here who is currently serving on a committee in my library system to figure out how best we can use/manage/tackle/fight/help our patrons use AI. Because it's there, they are using it, and they don't understand it.
Yeah I don’t try to tell patrons not to use it, much as I want to, but I do try to make sure they actually understand what it is and not just what it’s marketed as being (two VERY different things).
I really really felt this rant deep in my guts! I am a former law librarian (no longer in the field - long story but I've done biglaw and academic law and now have a role outside libraries but still legal information focussed) and this piece and your rant really spoke to me. I am so passionate about the provision of quality information and helping people find accurate info and empowering them to help themselves, and I just feel like it's always been an upward battle but it's now worse than ever. Fuck gen AI, truly
I’m a public children’s librarian and I’m always fascinated by the work librarians do in other fields and how it’s so often unseen and unrecognized. Someone is getting better care because of your work! That’s amazing!
Same! I'm an academic librarian at a public university but I attended the Medical Library Association conference a few years ago. I learned so much! It's not every day I learn about cadaver archives.
Wait what?? The lay people need to know more about cadaver archives!
Essentially old school dissection records and photographs. Most are undigitized. A lot of historical med schools have records like this.
I'm fascinated by the Surgeons Hall Museums in Edinburgh. Being an archivist there would be so cool!
I am a hospital librarian in the UK! I work across three hospitals in an NHS Trust and I can't imagine having to cover 50, that's bonkers.
Hi! I love this series (and your substack in general). Maybe this is tangentially related to how people organize their days/weeks, but I was thinking it could be interesting to see how small businesses make it work. I'd be curious to know how hair salons, flower shops, cafes, etc. manage to pay their employees, pay rent, etc. Whether they're looking for big ticket orders, or bank on seasonality, or if it's just a matter of consistent volume. I heard Ezra Klein say in a recent podcast (maybe the one with Brian Eno?) that in Japan shops are basically subsidized so they can be more niche than here in the US, which sounds so cool. Anyway, I'd love to know the biggest pain points, what would help make it easier, etc.
I'll try and look for more like this! For now I'd check out the hairstylist interview and the gardening ceramicist interview for how they manage their small businesses — both fascinating
This would be total catnip for me as well.
If you dig through the archives, she interviewed a hair stylist at some point within the last…6 months? It was interesting!
I saw that, it was so interesting!
Fellow medical librarian here, thank you for giving me something to point to when people ask about what I do all day! Untangling AI citations is the worst, I feel your pain
This was a fascinating read! I work adjacent to the medical field and am also worried about the ongoing budget cuts and gen AI issues. One thing that's especially tough with the fake citations is that a lot of the authors writing the articles that show up in PubMed are themselves using gen AI to come up with the citations for their work! So it's not just students or patients asking ChatGPT for information and getting fake citations, it's also the actual experts who aren't even bothering to check what they submit for publication. Not good.
this!!!!!
Multiple times I have had med students send me a citation and ask me to find them the full text, only for me to have to tell them it’s a hallucinated citation created by whatever AI they used to generate an answer for their question!
This seems oddly topical: I just got an email from EveryLibrary, an organization that helps libraries advocate and organize, indicating that the CDC librarians were among those laid off last week, but unlike many other staff, the librarians are not among those who were almost immediately called back. Sigh. 🤦🏽♀️ Guess we know who’s planning to rely on the bots now.
I love this! I’m a librarian (primarily at law firms). In library school I took a special libraries class, and we had a hospital librarian lead it and another guest speaker talked to our class. So fun!
Legal research and medical research are languages unto themselves. I'm an academic librarian and once tried to muddle through LexisNexis to help a visiting law student. Not easy!
Thanks for this! I did a co-op term at a hospital library during my MLIS studies and it was so, so interesting and even fun. The surgeon would call down and say “I need the procedure for such and such, the patient is with me now” and I just shuddered and hoped the health region had good insurance to cover my work!
I’m a medical school liaison librarian and was nodding at so much of this! I get to work with both doctors who work in our attached healthcare system and teach in our school, and students so I get a huge spectrum of people with differing levels of knowledge about what medical librarians can do.
I never thought about "hospital librarian" being a job before, but it makes total sense that it would be. What an interesting interview to read! Reminded me of when I did some internships in grad school with corporate and hospital art collections, both of which garnered much the same reaction. Lots of people never really stop and think about how all the things on the wall end up there, but getting them there (and keeping track of them, etc.) is absolutely someone's job.
From one librarian to another, thank you for the work you do! Thank you Anne Helen for featuring a librarian on the newsletter!
This was so interesting! I had no idea it existed but it makes so much sense that it does exist, kind of like a law librarian for a law firm.
I fucking love pubmed and MeSH. I’m so worried about all we stand to lose, if/when we lose the open web :/
This was a very validating read