Blog
April 14, 2026
Artificial intelligence is reshaping how academia and how research libraries serve their communities, but the path forward isn’t the same for every institution. Attain Partners AI Maturity Index for Academic Libraries helps libraries navigate AI adoption with clarity and a commitment to the people at the center of every decision.
AI maturity is not determined by the amount of AI technology a library uses. Instead, it measures how effectively AI serves the needs of its users, including students, researchers, and communities.
AI maturity is not determined by the amount of AI technology a library uses. Instead, it measures how effectively AI serves the needs of its users, including students, researchers, and communities.
Libraries face mounting pressure to continue serving their communities with integrity, while rapidly adopting new tools, workforce transitions, uncertain vendor landscapes, and constrained budgets. Our AI Maturity Index gives library leaders a structured, human-centered framework for understanding where they stand today and what a meaningful path forward looks like.
Introducing the AI Maturity Index for Academic Libraries
The Attain Partners AI Maturity Index is an assessment framework that evaluates AI deployment across eight dimensions of library practice. It produces a nuanced institutional profile and multi-dimensional view that surfaces your library’s strengths, gaps, and most strategic opportunities for AI adoption.
Core Dimensions of the AI Maturity Index
Collections
Do researchers find a collection that anticipates their needs or one that reflects vendor demos? This dimension traces how well AI aligns acquisitions with actual community demand, so course materials surface when students need them and faculty gaps are flagged before they become obstacles.
Discovery
Can students find relevant sources without already knowing which database to use? This dimension examines whether AI reduces search friction for all users by providing personalized pathways suited to each researcher’s discipline and goals, rather than relying solely on keyword overlap.
Facilities
Do students and researchers find the spaces they need when they need them? This dimension assesses how well AI enables the library’s physical environment to adapt to how the community actually works, from predictable availability to conditions that support wellbeing.
Governance
Do community members know how AI is being used on their behalf, and do they trust it? This dimension evaluates whether accountability structures, data privacy protections, and bias auditing are in place, enabling the library to earn and sustain community confidence in every AI-assisted service.
Instruction
Are all students building the AI literacy skills they need or only those in the right courses? This dimension examines whether AI-integrated instruction is embedded across curricula, personalized to each learner, and improving based on what helps students succeed.
Metadata
Is AI enabling your catalog to evolve with how communities actually search? Are you reducing barriers for non-expert users, surfacing connections across formats and special collections, ensuring that what the library uniquely holds is accessible to everyone, not just those who already know where to look?
Preservation
Will AI ensure that unique materials remain accessible to the next generation of researchers? This dimension examines whether AI enables the library to proactively identify at-risk items, prioritize digitization, and generate richer descriptions, thereby preserving and making fragile, rare, and unique collections discoverable.
Research
Do all researchers have access to high-quality AI-assisted support, or only those who know which librarian to ask? This dimension examines whether AI is expanding the library’s capacity to partner with faculty, graduate students, and postdocs at every stage of the research process.
The Index complements a growing body of work in the field on AI scenario planning, AI literacies, and workforce development for libraries and provides an institution with a path forward for those frameworks. Understanding your library’s current maturity across these dimensions is a foundation for an AI strategy, staff development initiative, or governance effort.
Assess your library’s AI maturity across these eight dimensions.
Use the self-assessment to generate a structured view of your current state and opportunities.
How Academic Libraries Can Use the AI Maturity Index
Assess Current State
Understand where your organization stands in its AI adoption journey, identifying strengths and gaps across dimensions.
Create a Roadmap
Establish a path from the current state to the desired future capabilities, helping leadership prioritize investments based on actual maturity goals rather than assumptions.
Align the Organization
Provide a common framework and language for discussing AI capabilities across departments and leadership levels.
Measure Progress
Track advancement over time with concrete metrics, building the evidence base for continued institutional funding, and demonstrating ROI on AI investments.
These use cases depend on a clear understanding of your current maturity.
Take the AI Maturity Assessment to establish your baseline and inform next steps.
Strategic Benefits of the AI Maturity Index
Build the Right Foundation First
Identify capabilities that need to be in place before advanced AI projects can succeed, so investments land on solid ground rather than outpace organizational readiness.
Invest Where It Matters Most
Direct resources toward areas where your current maturity level creates the greatest opportunity for impact.
Keep AI Anchored to Strategy
Ensure every AI initiative traces back to institutional priorities, so your library builds a coherent portfolio of effort rather than a collection of disconnected experiments.
Strengthen the Enablers That Make AI Work
Surface and address underlying factors, such as data quality, governance structures, change management capacity that determine whether AI tools succeed or stall.
Protect Your Community
Ensure AI adoption upholds your values, commitments, and human-centered service.
Lead with Purpose
Position your library as a trusted partner in your institution’s broader AI strategy.
Putting the AI Maturity Index into Practice
Attain Partners delivers AI assessments, technology vetting, and roadmaps that translate findings into actionable, sequenced plans so that AI adoption in your library is purposeful and sustainable.
Ready to understand where your library stands and chart a meaningful path forward? Take the self-assessment or contact our team to discuss a full strategic advisory engagement.
Start with the assessment to understand your current AI maturity across library operations.
For institutions seeking deeper analysis or facilitated planning, Attain Partners provides structured assessments and roadmap development.
Learn more about our Library Planning and Strategy services.
About the Author
Hilary Craiglow is a Senior Manager at Attain Partners, leading our team of library strategists to strengthen library systems. With extensive experience leading academic and research libraries, Hilary has a deep understanding of college and university systems. She is a strategic and visionary administrator, melding rich library traditions with innovative forward-thinking services. As a data and mission-driven leader, she employs proven evaluation and assessment methods and creates organizational transformation through empathy and partnership. Hilary helps library leaders achieve their mission faster, more efficiently, and with greater impact.
