Adoption of Artificial Intelligence in Public and Private Libraries of China: Determinants, Challenges, and Perceived Benefits

Artificial intelligence (AI) has much significance in different industries, including education. Due to increasing technological advancement, universities show their growing concerns about adopting several facilities linked with AI, specifically in their library management systems. Motivated by such an emerging trend, this research was conducted to examine AI adoption in both public and private libraries in China. The study explored the existing landscape of AI powered services in libraries, the perception of AI benefits, challenges related to AI adoption, and key determinants of such adoption for the targeted libraries. Using a questionnaire technique, the study collected data from different public and private libraries for which a sample of 154 respondents was finalized over the time span of 4.5 weeks. The analysis of the collected data shows that both the situations of launching and planning to launch different AI-related services were observed in Chinese libraries. Moreover, participants also confirmed several benefits of AI, including the enhancement of library operations by improving search accuracy, automating repetitive tasks, offering personalized resource recommendations, revealing usage trends through analytics, curating digital collections, improving cataloging, digitizing rare materials, and providing quick responses via chatbots, thereby allowing librarians to conduct their other more complex tasks. Additionally, the study confirmed several challenges associated with AI adoption. The results also revealed that along with other factors, the support from university administration, maturity and reliability of AI applications, and training and human resource management are positive and significant determinants of AI adoption. On the contrary, funding/cost associated with implementation and innovative services/alignment with technological trends reflected negative coefficients for AI adoption in Chinese libraries.