An Evaluation of National Institutes of Technology (NITs) Library Websites

In an academic set up the ‘library’ plays a pivotal role. It stores, analyses, interpret and disseminate information among the users to fulfil their information needs. It has been observed that recent technological advancement has revolutionised library services to a great extent. Now libraries are providing both physical as well as web-enabled library services to their users. In this context, library websites act as a major gateway in providing web-enabled library services. The sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the physical mode of library services. However, to support the ongoing teaching and learning process, libraries need to continue their services despite the lockdown. Therefore, the present study seeks to find out whether academic libraries are ready and adequately equipped to perform basic services during this critical juncture. The present study was directed towards exploring the readiness among the academic libraries by assessing their websites based on selected evaluation criteria. Hence, in this study top, 100 NIRF ranked institutes websites were examined by adopting 30-point evaluation criteria. These criteria were selected from the extant literature. These criteria were grouped into 04 categories i.e., basic website information, resource discovery, availability of resources and reference services. The readiness index of each library was calculated based on the availability and non-availability of the said criteria. The findings of the study reveal that 64 per cent of the libraries have failed to secure their score of 50 per cent on predefined criteria. It was also found that the preparedness index is independent of NIRF ranking. Overall findings of the study make it clear that academic libraries need to improve and up to date their web-based services to play a proactive role in the present and post-pandemic situation.

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Preparedness of the Libraries to Address the Recent Pandemic A Case Study on 100 Top Academic Institutes of India

Jana

Rout

2021

“…All university library websites show library collection on their websites. Kaushik conducted a study on library websites of 28 National Institute of Technologies(NITs) 13 . The study showed that maximum library websites are missing some features such as mission statements, floor plan, plagiarism check facility, FAQ, Ask-a-librarian, update date of library websites and few libraries are using the application of web 2.0 in their portal.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Efficient are University Library Portals of NIRF Ranked Indian Universities

Kumar

Yadav

2020

Seeing the underlying value of having a unified interface to update users about library services and activities, most libraries have developed library portals. The paper aims to evaluate the contents and services of top ten NIRF ranked university library portals and score them in the classes of Excellent, Good, Average and Poor. Further, the study aims to investigate the most preferred type of content available on Indian university library portals. The top ten NIRF ranked university library portals were evaluated using a checklist based framework covering broad categories such as Information about general, information about the library’s physical collection, Information about subscribed e-resources, information regarding the library’s services, and Information regarding the use of social Web technologies. Findings suggest that six of the selected library portals were rated in the ‘Average’ class(scores 40-60 %), which shows that most of them lack essential user-oriented information. JNU’s library portal carries maximum information for their users scoring maximum University Score of 28(62.22 %). Among the selected library portals 49.23 per cent prominently provide information about the library’s collection, followed by general information(46 %) and information regarding library services(35.33 %). Only one portal exploits social networking features. The study report that the Indian university library portals suffer from issues like currency, transparency, visibility of collection, availability of online services, and uniformity. The findings of the study will help the portal development team to select the most common category of content describing information about services and facilities available on library portals. The existing portals can also improve their interface based on the findings of the present study. Assessment of existing university library portals of the national top ten university library portals in India is the first attempt to evaluate this kind of sample. The study’s value lies in its evaluation framework, that’s minimal in nature covering the minimum information categories that must be available on any university library portal.

“…Pathak 9 , et al also revealed that no symmetry was found in the contents provided by the IIT's library websites. Kaushik 10 found that majority of the National Institute of Technology library websites have their name, logo, services, etc. but the websites lack currency, reliability, and web 2.0 tools.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contents and Interactivity of National Library Websites

Haneefa¹,

Jiji

2019

The contents and interactivity of national library websites around the world is analysed. The study was confined to ninety nine selected national library websites. A checklist along with a data sheet was used as the tool for data collection and Microsoft Excel was used as the tool for data analysis. The analysis revealed that the websites have almost identical pattern of contents and interactivity. Majority of the websites used interactive applications. Facebook is the most preferred application followed by Twitter, RSS and blogs. The websites preferred extreme top right corner and extreme bottom right corner of their homepages to provide links to the applications and web objects. This study is useful for developing design standards for library websites and portals.