An analysis of usability features of library web sites

Studies thirty library websites of top science universities around the world for their design features with special reference to usability. The guidelines suggested by National Cancer Institute have been applied to measure the usability features of the selected web sites. The parameters like Optimizing the user experience; link back to home; colour link behaviour; navigability; and multimedia features have been studied for the websites. The results showed that only 53.33% of library web sites provides, frequently asked questions (FAQs). The time out option has been neglected by all the web sites except one. It is noticed that only 39.99% of the web sites have provision for explicit home link as well as through logos. Persistent navigation feature is observed only on 50% of the web sites. Only 8% of the web sites use the de facto link color coding. Library web sites are yet to exploit the advantages of multimedia (interactivity features). It is found from the survey that only 30% of the web sites contain video contents and none of the web sites contained exclusive audio files