Reimagining Library Services: The Transformative Role of Artificial Intelligence in Service Deliveries in Academic, Research, and Public Libraries

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-614-2_3How to use a DOI?

Keywords

artificial intelligence; libraries; metadata; subject cataloging; virtual reference; chatbots; evaluation; governance; MLOps; authority control; discovery; OCR/HTR; accessibility; multilingual; analytics; library technology; academic libraries; public libraries; adoption; governance

Abstract

Libraries are moving beyond exploratory pilots toward task-focused Artificial intelligence (AI) deployments embedded in technical services and public-facing operations. This article synthesizes the strongest available evidence on implemented systems and proposes a pragmatic framework for evaluation, integration, and governance. AI is reshaping how libraries help their users. The clearest progress is in service delivery (for example, chatbots that answer questions on library sites or in the catalog), but AI is also being used for other library services such as metadata enrichment, subject cataloging, OCR/HTR for digitized collections, analytics for collection development, accessibility support, and multilingual services. This paper explains in simple language where AI is being used now, which technologies are involved, how adoption has changed over time, what impacts have been reported, and what to expect next. We synthesize real deployments and surveys across academic, research, and public libraries and summarize practical lessons, risks, metrics, and roadmaps. We find that: (1) rules/intent-based chatbots and generative AI chatbots are both in use, often with human escalation; (2) AI is helping with metadata and operations, especially when paired with human review; (3) adoption is uneven and slowed by integration, privacy, accessibility, and training gaps; and (4) the next two years will likely bring retrieval‑augmented, policy‑aware AI agents embedded in discovery and service portals, with better metrics and governance. Overall, AI’s role is best understood as human‑centered augmentation rather than replacement.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Prasanna Kumar Muduli
AU  - Bijayalaxmi Rautaray
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/03/27
TI  - Reimagining Library Services: The Transformative Role of Artificial Intelligence in Service Deliveries in Academic, Research, and Public Libraries
BT  - Proceedings of the International conference on Marching beyond the Libraries: Talent, Technology, and Transformation (ICMBL 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 16
EP  - 27
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-614-2_3
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-614-2_3
ID  - Muduli2026
ER  -