The purpose of this study is primarily to get insights from the information professionals regarding the readiness to adopt artificial intelligence (AI) in library operations and services. Additionally, this study also identifies the possible obstacles to adopting AI and recommendations to facilitate readiness to adopt AI in libraries.
This study is qualitative in nature. To get an in-depth understanding of the perception of the information professionals, this approach has been adopted. The perceptions were collected from 30 information professionals from nine public and private university libraries in Bangladesh. A structured questionnaire was used to gather data from the respondents by using an interview method. Anonymity of the responses was maintained to get the actual perceptions from the respondents. All the responses were transcribed into written form. A thorough review of the responses was conducted to get initial impressions, recurring themes and noteworthy points. These themes were then categorized under eight themes and analyzed accordingly.
This study findings showed a positive intent of information professionals in adopting AI in their respective libraries. This study found that information professionals in Bangladesh are well aware and confident regarding adopting and implementing AI tools and technologies. The findings indicated that the information professionals are also optimistic regarding the university’s technological infrastructure, leadership of the authority and financial support to adopt AI in library services. The participants identified challenges like data privacy and security, ethical concerns, resistance to change, cope up issues, arrangement of training programs, ethical issues and interoperability issues. This study also comes up with specific recommendations to facilitate the adoption of AI in libraries.
This study can provide a practical lens from which individual universities can also initiate surveys or interviews with information professionals and users of their respective organizations to get an insight into the adoption of AI in libraries.
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first attempts in Bangladesh to get an in-depth insight regarding the readiness of the information professionals to adopt AI in libraries.
