review · Business Information Review
A systematic review maps smart library technologies and implementations across four dimensions: people, place, platform, and policy. Research indicates that radio-frequency identification shelves consistently improve inventory tracking, while automated occupancy tracking aids space management. Furthermore, combining Internet of Things sensors with machine learning enhances indoor environmental comfort, and augmented reality provides promising tools for inclusive navigation. Despite these operational gains, real-world deployments face frequent constraints. Key barriers include limited staff and user capacity, absent or weak governance structures, underlying infrastructure deficits, and untested artificial intelligence safety practices. Successful adoption requires treating smart libraries as interconnected socio-technical ecosystems rather than isolated digital gadgets. Long-term integration relies on establishing standardised baseline performance indicators, formal governance frameworks, ongoing workforce training, and phased implementation roadmaps tailored to local organisational contexts.
Modernising public and academic spaces requires more than buying digital equipment. While smart sensors and automated tools streamline day-to-day facility and collection management, technology cannot succeed in a vacuum. Recognising the interplay between physical spaces, digital platforms, user skills, and institutional policies helps planners avoid costly deployment failures and design equitable, user-friendly institutions.
The findings inform developers and vendors of smart library solutions, including RFID asset management, IoT environmental controls, and augmented reality wayfinding software. Target customers are academic and municipal library administrators seeking operational upgrades. While individual components are applied and tested, near-market commercial success requires vendors to address integration hurdles by packaging hardware with workforce training modules, robust governance guidelines, and flexible architectures suited to constrained infrastructure.
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Smart library research is expanding quickly, but evidence remains fragmented across technologies, metrics, and evaluation methods. Many studies focus on individual tools, such as RFID shelves or occupancy sensors, while governance, user capacity, and contextual constraints receive limited attention. This fragmentation restricts cross-site learning and slows the development of coherent smart library strategies. Addressing this means the study reviews literature using Google Scholar as the sole database. Iterative keyword clusters covered IoT, RFID, AI/ML, AR wayfinding, environmental sensing, governance, and user capacity. Eligible sources included conceptual papers, empirical studies, systematic reviews, and practitioner reports, all mapped using the People, Place, Platform, and Policy (P 4 ) framework. Structured templates guided data extraction and quality appraisal, and findings were synthesized narratively due to diverse methodologies. The review finds consistent evidence that RFID-enabled shelves enhance inventory efficiency, occupancy systems improve space management, and IoT–ML environmental solutions increase user comfort. AR navigation tools show emerging potential for inclusive wayfinding. However, human capacity limitations, weak governance structures, infrastructure gaps, and immature AI safety practices repeatedly constrain implementation. The review concludes that smart libraries are socio-technical ecosystems and calls for baseline KPIs, embedded governance, and capacity development, supported by phased, context-sensitive roadmaps for scalable, equitable adoption.
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DOI: 10.1177/02663821261483509
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