AI-Powered Recommendation Systems and Resource Discovery for Library Management

Introduction

This twenty-first century is an era for technologization and digitalization; there is a technological change in every field, and this also includes the library. Traditional libraries with shelves full of books with tightly packed silent readers and limited numbers of books to lend and borrow, with time limits and fines, have also changed. This change is happening because of the exponential growth in digital information, where books, magazines, journals, research articles, and even text books have evolved from traditional books to digital books. This evolution is also positive, as it provides readers with an abundance of knowledge compared to traditional methods. With this abundance of information from a variety of domains, it is easy for the readers to stay updated and knowledgeable in a variety of domains that are of interest to them.

In traditional methods of library management, there are several standard ways of organizing, cataloguing, indexing, and maintaining the library's resources of library. Due to digitalization, digital contents and information now contribute to the major resources in libraries. Now there is a problem with the methods for maintaining, organizing, cataloguing, and indexing digital resources. The library is loaded with an abundance of knowledge, and this puts readers in a difficult situation about choosing the correct and relevant resource required and the questions such as how and where to find such relevant resources. This difficulty in traditional library management is considerably low because every reader can easily access the physical resources available with proper indexing and cataloguing by the librarian. To face such difficulties in digital resources, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being used in various services of libraries, which include cataloguing, assisting, resource recommendation, text summarization, knowledge discovery, etc., for the administration of libraries. The most common problems with the digitalization of libraries for users are: technical issues, platform independence, search and discovery of resources, lack of standardization etc., that can be addressed with the employment of AI in libraries. To summarize, modern libraries should employ more AI technologies to achieve efficiency in searching and utilizing the resource and to attract the users to engage in library to acquiring new knowledge.