Key Findings

A majority of survey respondents (76%) represented academic libraries, with 78% representing university libraries. Just under half of all responses came from the U.S. (47%). Key findings from those responses include:

• More than 60% of respondents are evaluating or planning for AI integration. However, there is a notable difference between public and academic libraries in that more academic libraries are in the early or active stage of implementing AI tools and technologies than public libraries. “While 58% of public libraries either have no plans or are not actively pursuing AI, only 31% of academic libraries are in the same position.”
• AI-powered tools for library users and patrons top the list of technology priorities for the next 12 months, according to 43% of respondents. And 27% intend to implement or enhance library management systems.
• Libraries that are actively evaluating or planning to implement AI align those initiatives with their library mission, such as supporting student learning (52%), supporting research excellence (47%), and making content more discoverable (45%).
• Librarians are implementing AI and expanding AI use to address issues such as library resources and content accessibility (47%), content discovery and recommendation (44%), research data analysis (36%), literature review and analysis (30%), and writing assistance (27%).
• More than half of the respondents (52%) anticipate that AI will necessitate significant upskilling and reskilling of staff; 42% believe AI will enable staff to focus on strategic and creative tasks by automating routines.
• More than a third of respondents believe that AI will lead to the creation of new job roles and specializations within the library.
• One-third of respondents are concerned about job displacement, while one-quarter remain uncertain about AI’s impact on staff roles and employment.
• AI skills gaps and tight budgets are top concerns. Respondents see the lack of expertise and budget constraints as more significant challenges than privacy and security issues, research/academic integrity, copyright/IP infringement, or misinformation:

• Almost half (47%) cite shrinking budgets as their greatest challenge.
• While 52% suggest that AI’s most significant impact on employment is upskilling, nearly a third (32%) state that no training is available.

Beyond AI

Librarians are concerned about issues beyond technology and AI, including open access, sustainability, and inclusion and diversity. More than half (55%) declared that their libraries have an inclusion and diversity strategy. Less than half (45%) responded that their libraries have a sustainability strategy. Sustainability is a lower priority for U.S. respondents, while the U.S. and the U.K. noted that their libraries had inclusion and diversity strategies.

One-fifth of respondents (20%) declared that open science (OS) and open access (OA) mandates did not have an impact on library strategies, although the impact varies by region. European librarians indicated that their libraries were highly affected (71%) by OS/OA mandates; the least affected were in the U.S. and Mainland China.

Public Libraries

The report presents an analysis of the responses from public libraries. Public librarians see AI as having the most impact on content discovery (34%), followed by library content and resource accessibility. More public librarians worry that AI might displace them than do academic librarians (42% versus 31%). Almost one-third (31%) of public librarians are not optimistic about the benefits of AI (versus 13% of academic librarians). More than half of public librarians (58%) “have no plans to explore AI or are not actively taking steps towards exploration, despite being aware of AI’s potential.”

Opportunities for libraries, as expressed by survey participants, are summarized by library type in the following table:

Clarivate recommends that libraries leverage the opportunities AI presents to address the challenges of tightening budgets and lack of expertise/need for upskilling of library staff by:

• Investing in training and development
• Partnering with research offices, faculty, teaching centers, and IT to transition from planning to implementation
• Advocating for increased funding, which is essential to supporting AI projects
• Establishing clear governance structures to ensure the ethical use of AI

Survey Data

Committed to transparency, Clarivate has uploaded the data analysis (as an Excel spreadsheet) to Zenodo for anyone who wants to see the survey data. The release of Pulse of the Library 2024 comes on the heels of the Sept. 4 launch of the gen AI-powered Web of Science Research Assistant. It anticipates the release of the ProQuest Research Assistant later this month in ProQuest One Business, ProQuest One Literature, ProQuest One Psychology, and ProQuest One Education.