Higher education keeps treating AI adoption like a complicated technical problem: pick the right tools, write the right policies, train the right people, declare readiness. This session argues it’s actually a complex organizational challenge, one whose effects on trust, role identity, expertise, authority, academic integrity, student agency, and institutional culture can’t be fully predicted in advance, no matter how good the policy. Academic libraries have a strong claim to leadership here. They’ve guided campuses through earlier upheavals, the web, search engines, digital scholarship, open access, information literacy. AI raises the same core questions, just louder and faster: What counts as knowledge? Whom do we trust? How do we evaluate sources? Who has access?

But it’s far from clear libraries are leading this conversation now. In many institutions, they’re running workshops and building guides while the decisions that actually matter get made elsewhere, without them at the table.

This session at the Charleston Conference puts that tension in the room. Mark McBride will be joined by colleagues with different perspectives and experiences on this topic to debate whether libraries are genuinely prepared to lead and what leadership would look like if AI adoption were treated not as a one-time tool rollout but as an ongoing process of institutional sensemaking.

Expect real disagreement. You’ll leave with sharper language for this debate on your own campus, and one concrete question or action to bring back. Join the session on Thursday, November 5 at 1:30pm.