Northeastern Library’s Dan Cohen on Improving Learning and Research by Connecting Collections and LLMs Through Model Context Protocol

The past year, Northeastern University Library developed and launched an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server and associated plugin for the AI Chatbot Claude. For academic requests, NUL’s enhancement of Claude makes extensive use of library resources, such as peer-reviewed articles, rather than the web resources normally consulted by LLMs through retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). Early testing has seen an improved experience for students and faculty seeking relevant library materials and has sparked some new ideas for supporting teaching and research.

For the Zoom link please go to our AI Advisor wiki.