Librarians' Artificial Intelligence Anxiety: Manifestations, Mechanisms of Influence, and Coping Pathways

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Received date: 2025-08-25

  Online published: 2025-12-30

Abstract

The accelerating application of artificial intelligence (AI) in libraries has aroused anxiety among librarians regarding AI technologies. To promote AI-enabled library development, it is necessary to understand the influencing factors of librarians' AI anxiety. This paper employed semi-structured interviews with 48 librarians from 30 libraries in China and applied grounded theory to code the data, extracting the dimensions of anxiety perception, characteristics of their manifestations, and key factors influencing the generation of anxiety. The study identifies eight dimensions of librarians' AI anxiety perception and reveals the influencing mechanisms of anxiety perception from three aspects: subjective evaluation, contextual factors, and personal characteristics. The study further discusses and analyzes the situational expression of AI anxiety, the absence of emotional governance mechanisms, and the crisis of professional identity, and proposes coping pathways to mitigate librarians' AI anxiety.

Cite this article

Chen Jingyi Wu Xiurong Chen Xiaonan Feng Changyang . Librarians' Artificial Intelligence Anxiety: Manifestations, Mechanisms of Influence, and Coping Pathways[J]. Library & Information, 2025 , 45(06) : 91 -103 . DOI: 10.11968/tsyqb.1003-6938.2025074

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