Integration of AI Chatbot into Library’s Operations: Opportunities or Threats to Librarians’ Role

The emergence of AI Chatbot is one that is received with mixed feelings. To some librarians, it poses threats to the roles of librarians hence the fear of losing their jobs. This paper is aimed at conceptualizing the place of AI Chatbot in libraries and its limitations, identifying some unreplaceable responsibilities of librarians as well as clearing some doubts as expressed by librarians by reconciling the impacts of Chatbot and how librarians can leverage the technology to enhance their services in the library. To achieve this, it applied interpretive content and document analysis method through which, a holistic review and synthesizing of collated literature from different databases which include Web of Science and Scopus were carried out. From the reviewed literature, it identified among other things that exploring the role of AI-powered Chatbots with virtual assistants enhances the provision of instant customer support, answering queries and assisting with information retrieval as well as that Chatbot or no Chabot, librarians are expected to perform their traditional and evolving roles in this contemporary global digital ecosystem. The paper, deduced that Chatbot is rather a tool with many opportunities rather than threats as thought by some librarians and that librarians should tap into it and brace up for the technological tsunami that is ravaging the entire global digital ecosystem. The suggestion is that in the face of emerging technologies like Chatbot, librarians should leverage the opportunities it creates and partner it to make the best out of it with a view to enhancing their services and not to see it as a threat.