Intelligent libraries: a review on expert systems, artificial intelligence, and robot

Purpose This paper reviews literature on the application of intelligent systems in the libraries with a special issue on the ES/AI and Robot. Also, it introduces the potential of libraries to use intelligent systems, especially ES/AI and robots. Design/methodology/approach Descriptive and content review methods are applied, and the researchers critically reviewed the articles related to library ESs and robots from Web of Science as a general database and Emerald as a specific database in library and information science from 2007–2017. Four scopes considered to classify the articles as technology, service, user and resource. It is found that published researches on the intelligent systems have contributed to many librarian purposes like library technical services like the organization of information resources, storage and retrieval of information resources, library public services as reference services, information desk and other purposes. Findings A review of the previous studies shows that ESs are a useable intelligent system in library and information science that mimic librarian expert’s behaviors to support decision making and management. Also, it is shown that the current information systems have a high potential to be improved by integration with AI technologies. In this researches, librarian robots mostly designed for detection and replacing books on the shelf. Improving the technology of gripping, localizing and human-robot interaction are the main concern in recent librarian robot research. Our conclusion is that we need to develop research in the area of smart resources. Originality/value This study has a new approach to the literature review in this area. We compared the published papers in the field of ES/AI and robot and library from two databases, general and specific.