AI for Access: Strategic Innovation at the Dutch National Library

Abstract Digitisation and access to information became increasingly important during the last two decades. At the same time, the challenges for all kinds of public services and organisations, also National Libraries, to hire new qualified staff members became even more challenging. To cover the needs and overcome the hurdles at the same time, the National Library of the Netherlands decided to introduce AI solutions and incorporate them into the traditional workflows like cataloguing. In 2023, the “Retrotool-Project” was initiated. The goal is to develop an automated metadata tool to accelerate and streamline cataloguing while ensuring data security, transparency, and ethical AI use. This tool will enable human-AI interaction to support cataloguers by automating repetitive tasks, allowing human experts to focus on complex metadata refinement. The “Retrotool-Project” can be seen as an example to introduce AI into a National Library to improve efficiency, quality, and accessibility of metadata while maintaining human oversight.