path for users to escalate to a human. The reviews are clear that chatbots help, but only when these conditions are met;
l engage with research support workflows. Researchers in the institution are already using these tools to assist with litera- ture reviews, and they are not always using them well. Liaison librarians who can teach the limits of the tools, particularly the problem of fabricated references, are valuable. The published research supports this;
l avoid over-promising on artificial intelligence literacy. Until the field stabilises, programmes should be modest in scope and honest about uncertainty. Teaching users that these tools are sometimes wrong, and that verification is therefore necessary, is more useful than teaching sophisticated frameworks that may not survive the next model release;
l keep an eye on the literature. The five reviews published in 2025 alone indicate the speed at which the field is moving. What is true today may need updating in twelve months. Building review-reading into professional development is a small invest- ment with a real return.
A closing observation
One observation that came out of preparing this review, and which is reflected in the reviews we read, is that researchers studying artificial intelligence are themselves users of artificial intelligence. We used Perplexity to identify some of the reviews discussed here. Other reviewers in our sample used ChatGPT to assist with summarising. Library users using artificial intel- ligence to write essays are not behaving very differently from researchers using artificial intelligence to assist with reviews about library users using artificial intelligence. This is not exactly a problem, but it is worth noticing. The line between studying these tools and using them is blurring.
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The line between teaching information literacy and being on the receiving end of AI-mediated information is blurring. For libraries, this is both a challenge and an opportunity.
The line between teaching information literacy and being on the receiving end of AI-mediated information is blurring. For librar- ies, this is both a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge is that the ground is shifting quickly. The opportunity is that few institutions are better placed than libraries to help users navi- gate it sensibly. Information professionals have spent a century thinking about how people find, judge, and use information. The technology has changed; the underlying questions have not. The research literature is unsettled, but it is consistent on one point: artificial intelligence is not going to leave information practice alone. It will continue to reshape it. Libraries that engage with that reshaping thoughtfully, neither rushing to embrace it nor pretending that it will go away, will be the libraries best placed to serve their users in the coming decade. The research, with all its gaps and unresolved questions, points in that direction.
About this article This article summarises a peer-reviewed study by Elena Maceviciute and Thomas D. Wilson, ‘Gaps in artificial intelligence-related information behaviour research: a review of reviews’. Informa- tion Research, 31(2), 495–517.
https://doi.org/10.47989/ir3126327 IP
August-September 2026
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