Libraries and Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

Libraries are increasingly entering the digital age, and demands on them to offer more digital services are widening, with user expectations of “remote or distant access,” “distant learning,” and the use of other modern internet technologies. To this end, libraries must accelerate their use of technologies like AI, “data mining,” “machine-readable data,” “machine-generated classification,” “semantic ontologies,” and internet accessible catalogs and content because their aim should always be user benefit, user convenience, and user satisfaction. In this chapter, the author examines ways in which technologies and libraries are trying to fulfill their modern role and expectations of the modern user. Additionally, the author will examine how to strengthen data ethics in those particular fields of library use that most endanger the user's intellectual freedom on one side and his right to privacy on the other. One of the essential roles of modern libraries, in their new “informational” identity, will be as “guardians of data ethics and intellectual freedom.”