Presenting a model for display and user interface specifications of web based OPACs on the basis of available universal standards and experts views in order to compare the Iranian library and information centers OPACs

摘要

The aim of this study is to present a model for display and user interface specifications of web-based OPACs on the basis of available universal standards and experts’ views in order to compare the present Iranian library and information centers OPACs. Three method were used for data collection in this research: literature review, survey of opinions by means of a checklist, and evaluation of the available web-based OPACs. The community of Iranian experts in OPAC issues and all of 6 available Iranian web-based OPAC were included in this research. From the examination of the experts’views on checklist items and evaluation of available OPACs, a model was concluded which comprised of a total of 14 criteria in two sections. Five criteria were related to display, and 9 to user interface. All in all, it was concluded that: 1) Iranian experts are more familiar with Nosa’s OPAC than other available OPACs, while ParsAzarakhsh’s OPAC gained the highest score in evaluation against the checklist. 2) The OPACs under study ranked 1st to sixth in terms of display as follows: Parsazarakhsh with 98.2 scores, Nosa with 93.6 scores, Payam with 89.4 scores, Oracle 77.6 scores, Irandoc with 68.2 scores and Ganjineh with 36 scores. 3). In terms of user interface, rankings from 1st to sixth are as follows: Parsazarakhsh, Nosa, Payam, Oracle, Irandoc, and Ganjineh. 4) The average scores calculated for all Iranian web-based OPACs were 77.17 for Display and 51.63 for user interface. 6) Considering both aspects together, rankings are as follow: ParsAzarakhsh with 85.44 scores, Nosa with 79.24 scores, Oracle with 63.47 scores, Irandoc with 56.04 scores, and Ganjineh with 27.22 scores. The overall average score was 64.40. Furthermore, the research findings revealed that in view of Iranian experts, “User interface” is more important than “Display”in web-based OPACs, whereas, in reality of the existing OPACs, they scored more of “Display” than “User interface”. Also, Nosa’s OPAC scored highest in “Display”, and Parsazarakhsh scored highest in “user interface”.