An ergonomic evaluation of the current library website of Luleå University of Technology and recommendations how to improve its usability

In the last few years, the number of businesses establishing a presence on the World Wide Web (WWW) has grown exponentially. The question of how to construct the Internet Website effectually has been an important and imminent problem. In this study the current library website of the Luleå University of Technology was assessed using two approaches. The first approach was an evaluation of the acceptability of both the previous and current library websites of the University. The second approach involved the comparison of the current website of the university with other five international universities in the Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom and the United States. Self-completion structured questionnaires were administered on 60 in the first approach and 30 subjects in the second approach. The results showed a consistently higher satisfaction with respect to the current library website as compared to the previous one. It was also observed that the relevant features of the current website, such as ‘ease of navigation’, ‘search function’, ‘information layout’ as well as ‘text quality’ are of the same quality standard as those of other international universities. It also came out that the amount of images appearing on the Luleå university library website were too many as compared to some of the international universities with few images. The study identified the need for further research to be undertaken at the higher level to design and develop a “screen saver” program for the LTU library website, which could help explain how to make effective use the library services as well as further to make further improvement in the “layout” and “use of links”.Validerat; 20101217 (root