Influence of Curiosity on Digital Competence in AI-Enabled University Library Ecosystems: Implications for Teacher Education Development
Organization: IIMT University Meerut
Abstract
The use of artificial intelligence in university libraries is changing them from traditional book-based spaces into modern learning environments that are smarter, more flexible, and focused on the needs of students.
This chapter explains how curiosity works as a cognitive and motivational force. Curiosity is the first step in the process of learning. Without curiosity, learning cannot truly take place. For this reason, learning is given importance in every field, and curiosity forms its basic foundation. The growth of any competence, including digital competence, depends on curiosity. In higher education and in other areas as well, it is curiosity that guides students toward skill development and further learning. Curiosity is known to be a basic psychological trait that encourages students to participate in interactive and learning activities and also develops critical thinking, decision making and evaluation habits in them. Curiosity inquiry, exploratory behavior promotes experimentation with AI tools and continuous engagement with digital academic resources.
All these properties also significantly impact the interaction with AI support services in the digital library, through automated search engines, plagiarism detection technologies, intelligence reference assistants, and cloud-based academic databases.
Higher education students' curiosity towards digital competence is examined to find out how capable they are digitally, which includes technical operational skills, information navigation capabilities, critical evaluation of digital content and ethical use of data.
This chapter establishes a developmental relationship through which curiosity initiates discovery and Exploratory learning facilitates skill formation, and this process of skill enhancement eventually culminates in advanced and well-developed digital competence. Examples of teacher education show practical applications in curriculum design, problem statements, instructional aids and research-oriented learning.Beyond individual learning, this chapter addresses institutional and administrative implications.AI enabled libraries are presented as interactive labs that foster curiosity driven engagement and digital capacity development.
Support various capacity building programmes - Guidance, Digital Literacy Modules and Inclusive Access Framework. Challenges such as digital readiness gaps ethical pyres and inequities in access have been highlighted and It has been proposed to examine and consider strategies that can be practically implemented. This includes curiosity-driven learning pathways, problem-solving skills, AI-assisted research mentoring, phased digital immersion, and institutional maturity models.
By integrating philosophical, psychological, pedagogical and administrative approaches, this chapter argues that the effectiveness of AI-enabled libraries depends only on the various technological infrastructures and human attributes that promote learning. Curiosity and digital competence provide a transfer framework for developing self-confidence, academic autonomy, pure research and professional skills among students.
Keywords: Curiosity, Digital Competence, AI-Enabled Libraries, Higher Education Students, Teacher Education, Academic Digital Literacy, Research Skills
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