Purpose–This paper reviews literature on the application of intelligent systems in the libraries with a specialissue on the ES/AI and Robot. Also, it introduces the potential of libraries to use intelligent systems, especiallyES/AI and robots.Design/methodology/approach–Descriptive and content review methods are applied, and the researcherscritically reviewed the articles related to library ESs and robots from Web of Science as a general database andEmerald as a specific database in library and information science from 2007–2017. Four scopes considered toclassify the articles as technology, service, user and resource. It is found that published researches on theintelligent systems have contributed to many librarian purposes like library technical services like theorganization of information resources, storage and retrieval of information resources, library public services asreference services, information desk and other purposes.Findings–A review of the previous studies shows that ESs are a useable intelligent system in library andinformation science that mimic librarian expert’s behaviors to support decision making and management. Also,it is shown that the current information systems have a high potential to be improved by integration with AItechnologies. In this researches, librarian robots mostly designed for detection and replacing books on the shelf.Improving the technology of gripping, localizing and human-robot interaction are the main concern in recentlibrarian robot research. Our conclusion is that we need to develop research in the area of smart resources.Originality/value–This study has a new approach to the literature review in this area. We compared thepublished papers in the field of ES/AI and robot and library from two databases, general and specific.

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