Jakir Hossain Medical College and Research Institute, West Bengal, India.
Abstract
The emergence of ChatGPT in late 2022 has sparked significant debate regarding its role in higher education and academic libraries. As a large language model (LLM) capable of generating coherent, human-like text, ChatGPT offers opportunities to enhance library services through improved information retrieval, reference support, research assistance, and open educational resource (OER) development. This paper examines the potential applications of ChatGPT within academic libraries, emphasizing its capacity to streamline tasks, enrich user experiences, and support innovative teaching and learning practices. At the same time, the study highlights critical challenges, including ethical issues related to authorship, plagiarism, bias, misinformation, and copyright ownership, as well as technical and logistical barriers to implementation. A review of existing literature demonstrates both the benefits and limitations of AI integration [10], [11], [16], underscoring the need for thoughtful strategies in deployment. The findings suggest that while ChatGPT and similar tools can function as valuable aids—potentially acting as virtual research or teaching assistants—they cannot replace the expertise and ethical stewardship of librarians. The paper concludes by calling for pilot programs, collaborations with AI developers, and empirical research to ensure responsible adoption, positioning academic libraries to balance innovation with accountability in an evolving digital landscape.
Keywords: Academic libraries, Artificial Intelligence (AI), ChatGPT, Digital literacy, Ethical considerations, Information retrieval, Reference services.
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