PurposeThis study investigates the level of artificial intelligence (AI) awareness among library leaders, practitioners and scientists of Indonesian academic libraries to elucidate the benefits of AI implementation and its necessary infrastructure and challenges.Design/methodology/approachThe study adopted a purposive sampling technique to select the 38 participants and thematic analysis to analyze the data, identifying eight themes: understanding of AI, AI adoption, benefits of AI, competencies needed to support AI, facilities to support AI, factors supporting AI adoption, AI-inhibiting factors and expectations of AI.FindingsDifferent viewpoints provided full awareness among library stakeholders and sufficient information to begin AI initiatives in Indonesian libraries as leaders, practitioners and scientists had a favorable, open and encouraging outlook on AI.Research limitations/implicationsThe study does not investigate variations in perspectives between the participants, but it examines their understanding of AI and elaborates the results into the concept of an intelligent library. Moreover, this study only uses samples from academic libraries.Practical implicationsLibraries can take these results into consideration before implementing AI, especially in technology and facilities, librarian competency with regard to AI and leadership roles in AI projects.Social implicationsLibrary boards and library associations can use this research as a source to create guidelines about AI implementation in academic libraries.Originality/valueThe study addresses the gap in the research on university libraries' readiness and awareness to implement AI, especially in developing countries.

This study aims to investigate the implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) in libraries from 2011 to 2020. This study uses PRISMA guidelines to perform a systematic literature review (SLR). The articles were obtained mainly from the SCOPUS database, with Google Scholar as the supporting database. AI can easily be adopted in libraries, especially for technical services such as classification and cataloguing, library management such as staffing and decision-making, library services such as referencing and information service, and for information literacy. Successful AI adoption is, however, still debatable, because there are many requirements that need to be met, so that it can be inclusively adopted in libraries. There is a lack of research on the application of AI in libraries, especially in the context of its actual implementation. The results of this study offer insights on the implementation of AI in library support services.