Hamid Reza Saeidnia
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to identify and classify the features of an effective website for Iranian public libraries based on the Kano model.This was an applied study and survey was used as the research methodology. The population of this study included 120 users of the public library randomly selected ...
Read More
The purpose of this study was to identify and classify the features of an effective website for Iranian public libraries based on the Kano model.This was an applied study and survey was used as the research methodology. The population of this study included 120 users of the public library randomly selected as the main participants. A researcher-made questionnaire was designed based on a focal model for data collection. The validity of the questionnaires was verified by the faculty members of the Faculties of Information and Science and Management. To analyze the data, the Kano evaluation model, Excel software and descriptive statistics were used. Cranach alpha was used to estimate the reliability index (α = 0.83)First, the features of an effective website of the public library were identified. Hence, services were classified based on five criteria (including must-be, one-dimensional, attractive, indifferent, and reverse) depending on Kano’s model and the librarians’ and site designers viewpoints. From 72 identified services, 33 services were must be, 16 services were one-dimensional, 18 services were attractive, 5 of them were indifferent, and no service was classified as the reverse one.The results showed that most of the services identified were found on the Web site of the world's public libraries, which is expected to be used by designers and librarians of public libraries to design their library site. However, in some cases, librarians’ and site designers' comments were considered useful, but less attention was paid to the choice of users due to the lack of user familiarity with the specialty of website design. Also, some suggestions are made to attract the audience and interest of public library websites users based on the research results.