Thanks to librarians at Georgetown University and Agnes Scott College for helping to create this content. Adapted with permission and used under license CC BY-NC 4.0
This is a work in progress. Please direct questions or edits to Katherine Furlong, Dean of Library Services at Bucknell University.
This guide is intended to help students, faculty, and staff at Bucknell University to navigate the quickly evolving terrain of generative AI. It provides an overview of popular AI research tools, offers guidance on crafting prompts in these tools, and points out ethical, legal, and environmental considerations of using AI. It also supplies resources related to core AI ethical issues while laying out basic citation rules.
If you require additional assistance, please don't hesitate to reach out to librarians at Bucknell for more information or to chat about the possibilities and pitfalls of generative AI.
Leo Lo defines AI Literacy as “the ability to understand, use, and think critically about AI technologies and their impact on society, ethics, and everyday life (2025).”
Generative AI focuses on creating "new" output based on user prompts against a dataset. Its primary function is content generation.
Agentic AI is a subset of generative AI that can execute actions and functions in external environments through tools. Its primary function is autonomous action.