If you run a school library, the AI tools worth your time this year are the ones that do a librarian's job: Gemini Notebook (Google's renamed NotebookLM) for teaching source-grounded research in high school, Perplexity for the reference desk and for showing students how to check a cited answer, AILitKit for AI literacy lessons that need no student device, Canva for Education for displays and book promotion, Read&Write for making the collection readable by every student, and Diffit for research packets at three reading levels. Below grade 9, three of those six never need a student account, one is assistive technology, and the two research tools stay in high school: the vendors' own age terms draw that line before any district does.
That last point is the week's news. On 2 September New York City Public Schools put a one-year moratorium on student-facing generative AI from 2-K through grade 8, kept an exception for assistive technology, and at the same time promised high school students two 45-minute AI critical-thinking modules a year on "what AI is and is not", bias, risks and ethics (NYC Mayor's Office, 2 September 2026). The next day K-12 Dive reported that Los Angeles Unified now blocks all student-facing generative AI on district devices (K-12 Dive, 3 September 2026). Source evaluation, authority, verification, privacy: the skills those modules describe are the ones school librarians (learning resource centre managers, for UK readers) have taught since before the card catalogue went digital. The chatbots are on pause; those skills are not.
This post is for school librarians and library media specialists in the United States first, and for anyone who runs a school library elsewhere. It recommends different tools for different jobs, and it says which job each one is not for.
How This List Was Built
The pool was the 126 tools in the aieducator.tools directory, filtered for the jobs a school library does: teaching research and source evaluation, teaching AI literacy, promoting reading, making texts accessible, and supporting mixed-reading-level research units. From that pool I kept six on four criteria: fit for one of those jobs, a free tier a librarian can use without a purchase order, a privacy posture the vendor documents in public, and whether the tool leaves the judging to the student rather than doing it for them.
No vendor paid for a place on this list, and none can.
What I left out, and why: Turnitin, because its AI-writing detector is the one job I would not hand a librarian (the evidence on detectors is here); Khanmigo, because it is a student-facing tutor and that is exactly the category New York and Los Angeles have paused; Padlet, a fine curation board with no AI feature worth the name; and Sora, NoodleTools, Book Creator and Destiny, which librarians will ask about but which are not in the directory, so I cannot check their records the way I checked the six below.
Pricing, age minimums and privacy statements were checked on each vendor's own site on 7 September 2026. Where a vendor publishes no price, the post says so.
What the Directory Data Says About Research Tools
Of the 20 tools in the directory tagged for research and reference, 14 set a minimum age of 13 or older (seven of them 18+), three declare no minimum, and two do not state one. Read that against the K-8 pauses and a pattern appears: the vendors reached the same conclusion as the districts, a year or two earlier. Across the whole directory, 45 of 126 tools do not state a minimum age at all, 45 do not state a FERPA position, and 48 do not say where they host data. Thirty-six carry an independent 9ine security assessment; three of the six below do.
The privacy column in the table is the vendor's declaration, not an audit. Where the directory record was blank for a featured tool, I fetched the vendor's own privacy page and cite it in the Safety line.
What can school librarians still do with AI under the NYC and LAUSD pauses?
Plan, prepare and teach about AI, but not put a chatbot in front of a student below grade 9. Chalkbeat's reading of the New York policy is that educators may still use AI for lesson planning, translating materials and drafting communications, while grading, behaviour monitoring, special education planning and student mental health support are off the table (Chalkbeat New York, 2 September 2026). The exceptions the Mayor's Office lists are assistive technology for students with disabilities, multilingual learners and career readiness programmes such as computer science (NYC Mayor's Office).
For a librarian that splits the six tools into two piles. Gemini Notebook and Perplexity are student-facing and stay in high school, where New York is also piloting five vetted tools (Quill, Edia, Brisk Teaching, Playlab and Intel AI-Ready Schools) under direct educator supervision. AILitKit, Canva for Education and Diffit never need a student account. Read&Write is assistive technology, which is the named exception. If you are outside New York or Los Angeles, your district's rules will differ; the split still holds, because it follows the vendors' age terms as much as any policy.
The Six Tools at a Glance
| Tool | Best use | Strengths | Limitations | Price / free tier | Privacy considerations |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini Notebook | Source-grounded research lessons, grades 9-12 | Answers only from the sources you upload, with inline citations; free with a school Google account | Some features (Deep Research, Infographics, Slides, interactive audio) are 18+; the directory record has no FERPA or hosting entry | Free with Google Workspace for Education; higher limits on paid editions | Google states education uploads and chats are not used to train its models |
| Perplexity | Reference desk; teaching students to check a cited answer, 13+ | Every answer carries its sources; independent 9ine assessment | Terms require users to be 13+; privacy notice says data may be used to improve its AI models | Free; Pro $20 a month; Max $200 a month | No education tier or student data agreement on the vendor's site |
| AILitKit | AI literacy lessons with no student device, K-12 | Four activities per lesson in about a minute, with coaching notes for non-specialists | Priced in pounds; the share of unplugged activities varies by guide | 3 free guides, then 1 a month; £59 a year per teacher; £999 a year per school (50 teachers) | Students never log in; vendor states zero data retention |
| Canva for Education | Displays, signage, book talks, reading challenges | Free for certified K-12 school librarians by name; students join by teacher invitation | The design AI is a bonus, not the point; students under 13 only through the invited classroom | Free for K-12 educators, students and districts | Canva states it never uses student data to train AI models |
| Read&Write | Making e-books, databases and web pages readable for every student | Text-to-speech, word prediction, translation, dyslexia-friendly fonts; independent 9ine assessment | Free only for teachers; student seats are a district purchase with minimums | Free for K-12 teachers; $184 a year individual; from $2.75 a seat at district scale | Vendor lists COPPA, FERPA, GDPR and ISO 27001 on its pricing page |
| Diffit | Research packets at several reading levels, in 70+ languages | Turns an article, PDF or video into levelled texts and questions | Free plan keeps only 90 days of history and cannot export to Google or Microsoft formats | Free Basic plan; school and teacher pricing not published | Vendor states it collects no student data |
Free tiers, prices and age terms checked 7 September 2026.
Best for source-grounded research lessons: Gemini Notebook
Gemini Notebook is the best fit for teaching high school students to research from sources they can name, because it answers only from the documents you give it and shows an inline citation for every claim, and it is free with a school Google account. The directory rates it 4.84 from 90 reviews, the highest of the six.
You upload the sources for a unit: two database articles, a primary-source PDF, a lecture recording. The notebook answers questions only from those, and each sentence carries a numbered citation that opens the passage it came from. Students click the number and read the passage. That single habit, checking the claim against the source, is the lesson.
Google confirms the rename: "We're renaming NotebookLM to Gemini Notebook", and states that in Workspace for Education it is "available to users of all ages with a few exceptions", the exceptions being interactive audio, Deep Research, Infographics and Slides, which are 18+ (Google Workspace admin help). The directory lists it under the new name.
What sets it apart from Perplexity is the fence. Perplexity searches the open web; Gemini Notebook cannot see anything you did not upload. For a research lesson, the fence is the feature.
Watch out for: the fence only holds if the sources are good. A notebook built on three weak web pages will cite three weak web pages with total confidence. Choose the sources yourself, or make choosing them the first half of the lesson.
Pricing: free with a Google Workspace for Education account; paid Workspace editions raise the usage limits (Google Workspace help, checked 7 September 2026).
Safety: Google states that for education editions "your uploaded files, chats and model outputs won't be reviewed by human reviewers or used to improve generative AI models" (Google Workspace help). The directory record shows no FERPA, COPPA or hosting entry, because the tool sits under the district's Google Workspace agreement rather than a separate one; check that your district has turned the service on and that its Workspace data agreement covers it. Under the New York and Los Angeles pauses this is a grade 9-12 tool.
Best for the reference desk and checking cited answers: Perplexity
Perplexity is the best fit for the librarian's own reference work and for teaching students aged 13 and over to check an AI answer, because every answer arrives with its sources listed, and it carries an independent 9ine security assessment. The directory rates it 4.27 from 15 reviews.
The job it does well is the fast first pass: a student asks about the Dust Bowl, Perplexity returns a paragraph with five numbered sources, and the librarian's question is always the same. Which of those five would you cite, and why not the others? A cited answer engine is a lateral-reading exercise with the sources pre-fetched.
What sets it apart from a plain chatbot is that the sources are visible by default rather than on request. What sets it apart from Gemini Notebook is the opposite of the fence: Perplexity reads the open web, so it is the tool for "is this true?" rather than "what do my sources say?"
Watch out for: the citations are real but the summary can still misread them. Treat every Perplexity paragraph as a claim to be checked against its own footnotes, which is, again, the lesson.
Pricing: free plan; Pro $20 a month; Max $200 a month (Perplexity pricing, checked 7 September 2026). No education pricing is listed.
Safety: Perplexity's terms require users to be "13 years of age or older" (terms of service, updated 23 January 2026), so it has no place in a K-8 library. Its privacy notice says the company uses data "to improve or create services and products, including our AI models", and the vendor's site offers no student data agreement (privacy notice, updated 8 July 2026). Our view: use it at the desk and in supervised high school lessons on shared accounts, and do not have students create personal accounts on school time without your district's approval.
Best for AI literacy lessons with no student device: AILitKit
AILitKit is the best fit for a K-8 librarian who has to teach AI literacy while students cannot touch AI, because it turns any lesson into four AI literacy activities with word-for-word coaching notes, and students never log in.
You upload a lesson, any subject, and in about a minute you get four activities with coaching notes, support, challenge and differentiation, mapped to AI literacy frameworks including UNESCO's, the OECD's and the DfE's; the vendor lists eleven (AILitKit). For a library lesson on evaluating sources, that means a discussion activity and a paper task you can run in the reading corner. The vendor describes each guide as "a mix of plugged, unplugged, discussion, and creative formats", so check the count of unplugged activities in each guide before you plan a screen-free hour.
What sets it apart from a policy document or a slide deck is that it starts from your lesson, not from a generic curriculum. If you want the wider picture, the blog's guide to teaching AI literacy sits alongside this.
Watch out for: it is a lesson-guide generator, not a curriculum. You still have to teach it, and you still have to read the activities with a librarian's eye before you trust them in front of a class.
Pricing: three free guides on sign-up, then one free guide a month; Teacher plan £59 a year or £7.99 a month; School plan £999 a year for up to 50 teachers; the vendor prices in British pounds (AILitKit, checked 7 September 2026).
Safety: the vendor states that students never use the platform, that prompts are not stored or used for training, and that uploaded files are deleted after processing; the directory records FERPA, COPPA and GDPR declared, data hosted in the EU, and a minimum user age of 18 (AILitKit privacy). Because no student data enters it, the K-8 pauses do not touch it.
Best for displays, signage and book promotion: Canva for Education
Canva for Education is the best fit for the visible half of the job, the reading challenge poster, the new-arrivals display, the book-talk slide, because it is free for certified K-12 school librarians by name and the directory rates it 4.62 from 39 reviews.
Canva's eligibility page lists "a certified K-12 (primary or secondary) school librarian" alongside teachers, learning support staff and curriculum specialists (Canva eligibility guidelines). Public librarians and parents are excluded. The AI features (Magic Studio) will draft a poster from a sentence and resize it for the door, the newsletter and the screen by the circulation desk.
What sets it apart from Adobe Express, the obvious alternative and also free for schools, is the classroom layer: students join by teacher invitation, and Canva states plainly that it "never uses student data to train AI models" (Canva for Education).
Watch out for: the AI is decoration. If you are choosing a tool to teach AI literacy, this is not it; if you are choosing a tool to make the library look like somewhere students want to be, it is.
Pricing: free for K-12 educators, their students and qualified districts, with Canva's commitment that it "will remain 100% free" for them (Canva for Education, checked 7 September 2026).
Safety: Canva states that Canva for Education is built to comply with COPPA and FERPA and that it never uses student data to train AI models; students under 13 reach it only through a teacher's invitation (Canva for Education). Those are the vendor's statements; the directory record carries an independent 9ine assessment but no FERPA or COPPA entry, so ask your district whether it has signed Canva's data agreement before inviting a class. Librarian-only use raises none of these questions.
Best for making the collection readable by every student: Read&Write
Read&Write is the best fit for the accessibility job, because it reads e-books, databases and web pages aloud with dual-colour highlighting, predicts words, translates, and switches to dyslexia-friendly fonts, and it carries an independent 9ine security assessment.
This is the tool for the student who can follow a grade-level text by ear but not yet by eye, and for the multilingual learner who needs the database article in two languages side by side. It sits on top of whatever you already subscribe to, which is why it belongs in the library rather than in one classroom. The blog's post on AI tools for students with dyslexia goes deeper on the reading side.
What sets it apart from the free text-to-speech built into Chrome is that the librarian can standardise one toolbar across every database and every device, and train students once.
Watch out for: the free licence is for teachers only. Student seats are a purchase with minimum quantities, so this is a district conversation, not a library-budget one.
Pricing: free for K-12 teachers; $184 a year for an individual licence; K-12 group pricing $18.30 a seat with a 150-seat minimum; district pricing from $2.75 a seat with a minimum purchase (Everway pricing, checked 7 September 2026). Texthelp, the maker, now trades as Everway.
Safety: the vendor lists COPPA, FERPA, GDPR and ISO/IEC 27001 on its pricing page (Everway); the directory record shows the 9ine assessment but no FERPA, COPPA or hosting entry. As assistive technology it falls inside the exception New York wrote into its moratorium, but the exception is for students with a documented need, so the special education team decides who gets a seat, not the library.
Best for research packets at several reading levels: Diffit
Diffit is the best fit for the librarian who builds a research unit for a whole grade and needs the same three sources at three reading levels, because it turns an article, PDF, URL or video into levelled passages with questions, translates them into more than 70 languages according to its directory listing, and involves no student account.
The workflow is the librarian's, not the student's. You paste the database article, choose the levels, and print or share the packets. For a grade 6 unit on the water cycle, that is one source, three versions, and no student below grade 9 anywhere near a chatbot.
What sets it apart from asking a general chatbot to "simplify this" is that Diffit is built around reading levels and keeps the questions and vocabulary attached to the passage. What sets it apart from the leveller inside MagicSchool is the export and the translation breadth.
Watch out for: the free plan keeps only the last 90 days of your resources and cannot export to Google Docs, Slides, Forms, Classroom or Microsoft formats (Diffit pricing). A librarian building a year's packets will hit that wall by Thanksgiving.
Pricing: free Basic plan; individual teacher licences and Diffit for Schools are sold by quote, with no public price on the vendor's pricing page (Diffit, checked 7 September 2026).
Safety: Diffit states "we don't collect any student data" and describes itself as FERPA and COPPA compliant (Diffit pricing page); that is the vendor's claim, and the directory record for Diffit has no FERPA, COPPA or hosting entry yet. Because the tool is teacher-facing, the claim mostly matters for the librarian's own account.
What About ChatGPT, Gemini, Khanmigo, Quizlet, MagicSchool and NotebookLM?
NotebookLM is on the list; it is Gemini Notebook now. Google Gemini, the general assistant, is the tool K-12 Dive reports New York has disabled for students (K-12 Dive, 2 September 2026), so treat it as staff-side for now. ChatGPT and Claude both offer free teacher workspaces this year, and the blog's comparison of the free platforms covers what a district should turn on; for a librarian they are drafting tools for newsletters and collection reviews, not research tools for students. Khanmigo is a student-facing tutor, which is the category on pause, and in my view not a library tool. Quizlet is a study tool and is not in the directory. MagicSchool has a text leveller and dozens of other teacher tools; if your school already pays for it, use its leveller before buying Diffit, and compare the two on export and languages.
How Should a School Librarian Choose an AI Tool?
Ask four questions, in this order, and the answer usually picks itself.
- Who touches it, the librarian or the student? If a student does, the vendor's minimum age decides the grade band before any pedagogy does. Perplexity is 13+ by its terms; Gemini Notebook keeps four features for adults. If only you touch it, the K-8 pauses are irrelevant to that tool.
- Where do the answers come from? A fenced tool (Gemini Notebook) teaches "what do my sources say?" An open-web tool (Perplexity) teaches "is this true?" Both are library lessons; they are different lessons.
- Who does the judging? If the tool decides which source is credible, it has done the student's thinking. If it lays the sources out and waits, it has done the doing. Keep the tools that wait.
- What does the vendor say in public about student data, and has the district signed it? A statement on a pricing page is a start, not a finish. If the answer to the second half is "I don't know", the tool is librarian-only until you do.
A chatbot on pause is not a research lesson on pause. It is the reason the research lesson matters.
A Worked Example: A Grade 10 Research Lesson With Gemini Notebook
This is a plan, not a memory, written for a 50-minute high school library session on the causes of the 1930s Dust Bowl, in a district where high school use of a source-grounded tool is permitted under supervision.
Before the lesson, the librarian builds one notebook with three sources: a database encyclopaedia entry, a Library of Congress primary source, and a peer-reviewed article summary. Students work in pairs on shared school accounts. Minutes 0 to 10: the librarian asks the notebook "What caused the Dust Bowl?" on the screen, reads the answer aloud, and clicks the first citation to show the passage it came from. Minutes 10 to 30: each pair asks the notebook two questions of their own, then, for every citation in the answers, writes down which source it points to and whether the passage supports the sentence. Minutes 30 to 45: pairs try to ask a question the notebook cannot answer from those three sources, and note how it responds. Minutes 45 to 50: the exit ticket is one sentence. "The claim I checked, the source it came from, and whether it held up."
The measure of success is not the quality of the notebook's answers. It is whether every pair can name a claim, a source and a verdict by the bell. That is the skill Pew found teens already need: 57% of US teens aged 13 to 17 have used a chatbot to search for information and 54% to help with schoolwork (Pew Research Center, 24 February 2026). The habit of checking is the part no chatbot supplies.
What I'd Do This Week
Pick one grade, one lesson, one tool. If you serve K-8, sign up for AILitKit's three free guides, upload the source-evaluation lesson you already teach, and run the unplugged activity with one class on Friday. If you serve high school and your district has turned Gemini Notebook on, build the three-source notebook above and run it with one section. In both cases the measure is the same: can students name a claim, its source and a verdict at the end?
The Bottom Line
Gemini Notebook for source-grounded research in high school, Perplexity for the reference desk and for teaching 13+ students to check a cited answer, AILitKit for AI literacy below grade 9 with no student device, Canva for Education for the displays, Read&Write for accessibility, and Diffit for levelled research packets. Three of the six never need a student account, and the other three follow the vendors' own age lines, which happen to match the districts' new ones. Compare the rest of the directory's AI tools for schools before you buy anything.
The districts paused the chatbots. Nobody paused the librarian.
Dan Fitzpatrick is a Forbes contributor, three-time bestselling author, founder of The AI Educator and has trained more than 150,000 educators across 30+ countries. Read more from Dan.
