BETWEEN AWARENESS AND READINESS: ARTIFICIALL INTELLIGENCE (AI) IN THE LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE PROFESSION IN NIGERIA

This article reviews evidence on artificial intelligence (AI) awareness and readiness among Library and Information Science (LIS) professionals in Nigeria and proposes a framework for turning awareness into practical readiness. A narrative review was conducted of recent Nigerian empirical studies, covering academic, polytechnic and national-conference samples across several geopolitical zones, and supported by international literature on technology adoption and AI literacy. The review shows that awareness is uneven: moderate for familiar tools such as chatbots, AI-powered search and plagiarism detectors, but low for advanced applications such as recommender systems, predictive analytics and AI-assisted cataloguing. Attitudes toward AI are generally positive, yet readiness is constrained by inadequate training, weak policy frameworks, unreliable power supply, limited funding and concerns about job security. The article moves the discussion beyond measuring awareness to examining the gap between awareness and readiness. It offers a five-dimension readiness framework and a research and policy agenda for the Nigerian Library Association, the Librarians' Registration Council of Nigeria, LIS schools and library employers.