Identifying Dimensions and Their Measuring Items for Library Website Usability Acceptance Model: Instrument Development and Validation

A library website plays an enhanced role compared to its traditional physical library while providing a wide variety of library services to its users. Evaluation of library websites is a key to realize the extent of user acceptance to the website and to improve overall quality of website. Usability is a highly recognized factor to determine how easy to use the website. The models of usability evaluations evaluate the ease of use of website operations and see whether the users can perform their tasks competently. Moving on further, this study has been undertaken in context of library websites in Sri Lanka with the main purpose of exploring the relations between different dimensions of website usability and their impact. The study first investigated the common dimensions of website usability together with instrument items to measure dimensions by integrating the findings of an extensive literature review as well as discussions with local experts. The measurement instrument was then empirically validated its reliability and validity for the Sri Lankan library system with the aids of actual library users in Sri Lanka. Descriptive statistics methods and structural equation modelling techniques were applied. The proposed usability evaluation model consisted of the seven dimensions and two to three measurement items for each dimension. It is expected that this model can be used as a library website usability evaluation tool to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the website and update the website performance up-to-date.

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