The Impact of Generative Artificial Intelligence Technologies on Chinese Librarians' information Behavior and Ethical Discussion: An Empirical Study Based on a Small Sample

This study used a combination of questionnaires and interviews to survey 68 librarians in mainland China. The questionnaire was divided into three parts: (1) providing descriptive statistics of the interviewed librarians; (2) exploring the impact of generative technologies on librarians' information behaviour from work scenarios; (3) investigating librarians' concerns about ethics and strategies for coping with ethical challenges. The results show that generative AI technologies had a greater impact on information seeking, information encountering, and information using behaviours, and an insignificant impact on information sharing behaviours. In addition, the results of the study reflect that 67.65% of librarians showed a very high level of concern about privacy and security; 66.18% of them believed that the content generated by the tools needed further validation. The study also provided six recommendations from the perspective of libraries and librarians to address ethical challenges such as the spread of disinformation and bias.