A look into Kula: Library Futures Academy—the world's first library-based institute of advanced studies

Academic libraries have long stood as temples of truth—sanctuaries where scholars seek to expand human understanding. Yet knowledge is rarely born in isolation. The most transformative discoveries have emerged through collaboration. From the physicists and engineers who united to land humans on the moon, to the global network of thousands of scientists who mapped the human genome, scholarly alliances have been vital in achieving unimaginable feats for humanity.  

In a time of constant misinformation and dwindling trust in institutions, the University of Victoria Libraries’ Kula: Library Futures Academy offers a world-leading, visionary space for researchers, students, faculty and staff to work side-by side to address complex global challenges through diverse technologies, creativity and shared inquiry, embodying the zeitgeist of historical projects past. 

In 2025, the Kula Academy was established under the leadership of inaugural director Matt Huculak, and transforms the role of libraries into incubators of innovation, expanding their traditional scope to produce research and initiatives that serve both people and the planet. Through interdisciplinary seed projects, library staff are given an opportunity to address pressing issues in academia like  artificial intelligence (AI) and human rights to then design creative and scientific solutions. 

Already, the Kula Academy is involved in a multitude of projects: from developing an AI open-source retrieval system, to teaching geospatial data skills through partnerships with the departments of environmental studies and geography; to harvesting flax to produce sustainable materials for book arts; and cultivating a cross-institutional open science community across Victoria. At its core, the academy embodies the enduring belief that knowledge grows best and reaches furthest when it is shared. 

Q: What inspired the creation of the Kula: Library Futures Academy, and how does it reimagine the role of academic libraries? 

Huculak: Kula Academy donors Brian R. Gaines and Mildred L. G. Shaw were very much interested in starting an institute of advanced studies because they saw the value in researchers coming together from across campus collaborating to do great things. It's just natural that academics get into silos and start to see the world solely within the framework of their own disciplines, but exciting things can happen when we work together and begin to see the world with different perspectives. 

Q: What are the biggest challenges and advancements you predict with the growth of AI technologies with regards to education? 

Huculak: Let's start with the opportunities, because we're producing more information now than our species has ever been able to produce in our history. The printed record from 1500 to 1970 was still fairly contained. We were able to, as librarians, professionally examine and create structures so that information could be accessed and preserved over the long term. Then, the computer hits, and it has a very fast rise. The personal computer hits the market, and nowadays your phone probably has more data on it today than humans were able to produce over hundreds of years. Thus, AI potentially offers us a way to examine our past in digestible ways that we simply can't do as individuals. Computers can help us sift through and contextualize a lot of that work for us.  

I think, in terms of caution, one challenge is AI slop, because you have AI creating false information as well as bad actors programming AI to produce false information. The other thing is that it's getting harder for libraries and archives to manage the material coming to us. We now have vendors putting books in catalogs that we did not order, that are made by AI, and they won't let us not have them. This, to me, is unethical. I’m not saying these books are false, but I am saying vendors are taking away our choices. We have a lot of work to do as guardians of truth, as guardians of trustworthy information in our rapidly changing environments— whether those be popular or scholarly environments. We're not safe on either side, so our professionalism will be more important than ever. 

Q: How do Kula’s seed fund projects position UVic Libraries as leaders in ethical, open, and science-driven research? 

Huculak:  I think if we were to define Kula at its core, it's about transdisciplinary collaboration. We have a building full of wonderful colleagues who work every day across disciplines, working with faculty, students, and staff, whom, naturally, have a traditional view of our work. But we now live in a world that is changing fast, and libraries are changing fast with it. The seed grants are an opportunity to give colleagues an opportunity to think through what challenges they and their colleagues are going to face, and then to empower them to explore those issues.  

When choosing the seed funds, the ability of the project to show the connections to our work and values became a guiding principle. Nick Rochlin, science and data librarian, wants to work with Research Computing Services to create a local, secure space for research with AI to happen. Heather Dean, associate director, special collections, is working with Mary Elizabeth Leighton, professor and acting chair, department of English, to grow flax in the community garden so that students can make paper out of it. Is that something a library traditionally does? Absolutely not. Is it something we can be involved with? Absolutely, because it brings the students into the library in a more meaningful way and gives them a hands-on experience in our lab. So, these projects represent interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary and collaborative initiatives that involve students and faculty and encourage them to think about library work in a new way.  

Q: What are your hopes for the long-term impact of Kula on student learning and community engagement? 

Huculak: The entire reason the university exists is for students: the university is an agreement the past has with the present. A part of learning is also understanding what is important to us as individuals and then feeling like you have the strength of knowledge to become the person you want to be in the world.  I hope that Kula’s projects connect students with librarians and with other researchers across campus, so they can experience the university in new, meaningful ways. That's my hope: that it enriches the student experience, so that they understand the infrastructures that make knowledge possible at the university and beyond. 

Q: How can other institutions learn from UVic’s approach to integrating science, technology and library innovation? 

Huculak: Institutions can create library spaces that are more meaningful to students, not just as study spaces, but as spaces of engagement.  For instance, UVic Libraries has a Digital Scholarship Commons; there's an analogous space at the University of Alberta, doing wonderful things, and in terms of information/book history, there’s The Book History and Print Culture Collaborative Graduate Program and the Book and Media Studies undergrad with spaces in the Massey College Robertson Davies Library and the Kelly Library respectively at the University of Toronto. I think ultimately, we could have all these great resources for students, but students also need to find out about them, and this is a challenge for any library. We can do this by constantly seeking to engage with students in new ways that advances their work, and their understanding of the work librarians do.  

The great conjuring trick of any educational institution is to allow students to realize that they don't just exist in a world as it is—that this world is the sum result of billions and billions of decisions and actions that have come before. A significant part of education revolves around deconstructing our environment so that we can start to see how things develop and come into existence. Once you understand how things become, you have a shot at arranging the strings in your own life to create and become what you want. I know that's a big ask in terms of what others can learn from us, but I think ultimately the library plays that extremely important role in terms of the information space that we inhabit.