Exploring the Possibility of Using Chatbots as Educational Tools for School Libraries

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the possibility of using chatbots as a school library educational tool. In order to achieve the purpose of the study, 116 librarian teachers first investigated the types and contents of education conducted in the school library setting and the perception of chatbots there. In addition, 15 librarians (five elementary, five middle, and five high school) were asked to complete a structured questionnaire after using Google’s Bard, Microsoft’s Bing, and OpenAI’s Nova to find out if it is possible to use chatbots in school library education. As a result, user and reading education chatbots were found to be common in school libraries, and 99% of librarians knew about them in some detail. However, the average chatbot performance by area was 2.9 out of 5 (2.6 points being the lowest). Nevertheless, chatbots are being developed utilizing deep learning methodologies and have excellent performance, and are very effective for content-based library education through problem-solving activities.

Keywords

• school library
• school library education
• educational tools
• chatbots
• teacher-librarians