One question runs through most of the AI in education work I cover: if educators don’t actually understand AI, how can they teach students to use it well? Ali and Richardson’s (2025) scoping review brings the same question to academic libraries, and the picture they assemble isn’t reassuring. They flag a finding from Lo’s (2024) survey of US academic librarians, reported in the review: only 3.68% of respondents had high AI literacy, with 45.39% at moderate levels. Those numbers should set off alarms across higher education.
The paper’s contribution is to map what academic libraries are doing about AI literacy and what guidance exists from major professional bodies. Ali and Richardson screened 1824 papers and found just 10 that fit their inclusion criteria. The number is itself a finding. The formal literature on AI literacy in libraries is thin for what’s now an urgent topic.
The Real AI Literacy Gap
The paper’s most important finding sits underneath the policy mapping. Ali and Richardson warn that “without AI literacy skills, librarians are at risk of not being able to effectively serve their users” (p. 597). I agree, and I’d take the framing harder. This isn’t a future risk. It’s already happening. Students are using AI-mediated library platforms every day, often without realizing it.
This connects directly to McCrary’s (2026) argument about students becoming “ghosts in the machine” inside library databases. If librarians don’t understand how vendor-embedded AI is reshaping student research, they can’t help students see it either. The paper hints at this when it discusses fair-use rights and contractual overrides, but it doesn’t quite name the deeper problem: librarians can’t critique what they don’t understand.
The authors’ recommendation here is the right one, but it needs more weight. They emphasize that “AI literacy programmes need to address fair-use rights regarding AI tools” (p. 597). That’s correct, and this should be a baseline expectation across academic libraries by next academic year, not an aspiration for the future.
Three Holes in the AI Literacy Map
Ali and Richardson’s map has three holes worth filling. The first concerns scope. The paper’s review window closed in October 2024, and a lot has happened since. UNESCO (2024) issued an AI competency framework for students that any library AI literacy programme should now reference.
Chee, Ahn, and Lee (2025) have proposed an empirically grounded AI literacy competency framework. Roe, Furze, and Perkins (2025) introduced the digital plastic metaphor for thinking about AI literacy as a way of seeing, not a workshop topic. Library policies built only on the frameworks Ali and Richardson reviewed will already be a year behind.
The second concerns vendor practices. Ali and Richardson mention publisher contractual overrides and AI tool integration in passing, but the paper doesn’t fully reckon with how default AI features in library databases (EBSCO Insights, ProQuest Research Assistant, Scopus AI, ClinicalKey AI) have already shifted what AI literacy needs to address. Library AI literacy can’t only mean teaching students to use ChatGPT well. The harder work is teaching them to spot AI operating invisibly inside the platforms they trust.
The third concerns the librarian upskilling problem itself. The paper recommends professional development, AI ethics committees, and reskilling programmes. All three are useful recommendations. But the deeper problem is that most institutions don’t fund librarian training time, and AI literacy work falls on individuals after hours. Without structural investment, the recommendations won’t reach the librarians who need them most.
Ali and Richardson have done what scoping reviews are supposed to do. They’ve mapped the field and named the gaps, producing a useful resource for anyone designing AI literacy work in academic libraries right now. The 10-paper base is thin, but that’s the field’s failure to publish, not theirs to find more.
Their argument that “while libraries should develop guidelines for AI use, this should be done after consulting initiatives by relevant professional bodies” (p. 593) is correct, and the professional bodies they highlight give libraries solid scaffolding to build from.
The work now is execution. Librarians need real AI literacy training, the kind institutions actually fund. From there, policies follow. The current default, where vendors define AI literacy inside library workflows, has to end.
References
- Ali, M. Y., & Richardson, J. (2025). AI literacy guidelines and policies for academic libraries: A scoping review. IFLA Journal, 51(3), 588-599. https://doi.org/10.1177/03400352251321192
- Chee, H., Ahn, S., & Lee, J. (2025). A competency framework for AI literacy: Variations by different learner groups and an implied learning pathway. British Journal of Educational Technology, 56, 2146-2182. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.13556
- Hervieux, S., & Wheatley, A. (2024). Building an AI literacy framework: Perspectives from instruction librarians and current information literacy tools [Choice White Paper]. Choice / Association of College and Research Libraries.
- Long, D., & Magerko, B. (2020, April). What is AI literacy? Competencies and design considerations. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 1-16). https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376727
- Lo, L. S. (2024). Evaluating AI literacy in academic libraries: A survey study with a focus on U.S. employees. College & Research Libraries, 85(5). https://crl.acrl.org/index.php/crl/article/view/26409/34344
- McCrary, Q. D. (2026). Are we ghosts in the machine? AI, agency, and the future of libraries. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 52, 103181. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2025.103181
- Roe, J., Furze, L., & Perkins, M. (2025). Digital plastic: A metaphorical framework for Critical AI Literacy in the multiliteracies era. Pedagogies: An International Journal. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/1554480X.2025.2557491
- UNESCO. (2024). AI competency framework for students. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. https://doi.org/10.54675/JKJB9835