The Evolution of Smart Libraries in Universities: A Systematic Review of Technological Trends and Sustainability Challenges

The rapid development of digital technologies has transformed university libraries from being primarily collection-based repositories to becoming more intelligent, connected, and user-focused knowledge environments. The systematic review seeks to synthesize the literature indexed in Web of Science and Scopus to explore the technological trends, sustainability dimensions, and implementation challenges of smart libraries in universities. The publications examined covered the period from January 2015 to June 2025. A PRISMA 2020 reporting framework guided the review. The database searches yielded 16,061 records, and 4,818 duplicates were removed, leaving 11,243 records for title and abstract screening. A total of 1847 publications were taken forward for full text review, of which 42 met the stated eligibility criteria and were included in the thematic synthesis. The evidence base comprised systematic reviews, survey-based quantitative studies, mixed-methods studies, qualitative case studies, and conceptual or theoretical publications. The most often represented technology was AI, followed by the Internet of Things (IoT), big-data analytics, cloud computing, augmented and virtual reality, and blockchain. Environmental management, financial planning, human-capital development, governance, and institutional partnerships shaped sustainability. Major barriers to implementation included poor ICT infrastructure, financial limitations, absence of professional skills, resistance to organizational change, data privacy and regulatory concerns, as well as unequal access to digital technologies. The review implies that smart-library development should be viewed as a sociotechnical transformation rather than a technology-acquisition exercise. Sustainable implementation will therefore need phased investment, ongoing professional development, user-centered design, privacy-sensitive data governance, interoperable infrastructure and explicit attention to equity and inclusion.