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Artificial Intelligence for Teaching, Learning & Research

Library Databases vs Generative AI Tools

The two are very different systems designed to do different things.

  • Library databases are collections of published resources (academic journals, newspapers, reports, magazines, eBooks, etc.)  stored and indexed for searching.  Library databases were built to help you locate reputable sources for your research in a variety of sources.
  • Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools, like ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot, are large language models (LLMs) meant to predict text. They are trained on a large dataset of internet sources and analyze text to predict what word will likely come next. GenAI was not designed to research. So when you ask a GenAI tool to do so, it often creates fake citations called hallucinations because it has been programmed to respond rather than be accurate.

Strategies to Determine Whether a Citation is an AI Hallucination

The following strategies can be used to verify whether a citation generated by a GenAI tool is legitimate. You may need to use a combination of the strategies below to decide.

We recommend searching for a citation in the order provided below. If the citation is correct and available in the library or via one of the other strategies below, you can then move on to consider whether the resource supports the content it is referencing.

  • Search by Article Title Using the Library's Summon Service. Summon (http://wayne.summon.serialssolutions.com/) searches most materials available in the library databases (about 80% of the library collection), making it a great place to start your search.  Very important: On the Results page, click in the box next to the Add Results Beyond Your Library's Collection.  Summon defaults to displaying items accessible from WSU Libraries resources and it is possible that the article you a trying to locate comes from a source that we do not have access to. 
  • Specialized Techniques for Searching Summon: Consider also using the following techniques in your Summon search:
    • Quotations: Use quotation marks around the titles to ask it to search the words as a phrase which makes your search more specific (for example, "Knowing but Not Enacting Leadership").
    • Keywords: If your exact title does not retrieve an article, try using a few of the more distinctive keywords from the title (for example, enter technology AND students AND education for Education technology: Does education technology help students learn?).  Also try a search combining keywords and the first author's surname (eg. technology AND students AND Ahmadi
    • Author Combinations:  If the article has multiple authors try a keyword search combining the author's surnames (eg. McGinnis AND Liston AND Martinez) to see if this group of authors has written something similar together.
    • Field Search: Use the Options link near the right hand end of the Search box to access the Advanced Search features.  Here you can use the pull-down menu in front of the search box to designate which specific field the search terms will be searched.  Select Title to limit you search to words in the article title.  You can use the quotations or the keywords techniques in this field but any authors you are searching should be typed in the box on the second line since they would not occur in the Title field.
  • Search for the Article Title in Google Scholar. Google's collection of indexed articles is more expansive than the library holdings. Search for the article title using quotation marks and review the results to see if there is a match.
    • Access Google Scholar from our library. Using the library link will provide you with a link to the article if it is available in our library.
    • You can also use the Keyword AND first author suname technique and the Author Combination technique in a Google Scholar search.
  • Search by Journal Title in Summon and on the internet (i.e., Google). 
    • In Summon, use the Options link described above to search for the Journal Title.  In the Pull-down menu in front of the search box select Publication Title to limit the search to the field containing the journal's title.
      • If the journal appears in the results list follow the link to access the journal and navigate to the Volume and Issue cited in the reference.  This will let you see if the article or something similar to it appears where it is cited to be.
      • If the journal is not listed in the results, you should be given the option to include sources from outside the WSU Libraries' collection.  The journal may exist and we simply do not have access.
    • Search Google for the journal title in quotations.  Most current journals have a webpage at their publisher's website which can be found using Google.  Many of these pages allows you to browse through the Tables of Contents of each of their issues.  Navigate to the volume and issue provided in the citation to see if the article appears where it should..

If you've reached this last step and still have not found the article, the citation is likely to be a hallucination and therefore not a real article.