A study of web‐based services offered by Asian national libraries

Abstract

PurposeThis research aims at conducting a survey of web‐based services offered by Asian national libraries.Design/methodology/approachTo do this, 23 accessible and English language web sites of national libraries in Asia were studied. Direct observation and a checklist including six general services were used for data collection and data evaluation, respectively. In order to determine the detailed services provided by national library web sites, five web sites of the greatest and historical national libraries in the world with appropriate geographical distribution were taken into account.FindingsNational Library of Singapore had the first rank in providing its services via a web site for users and was the only national library in Asia that provides more than half of its services (52.29 per cent) via the web site. The national libraries of seven countries: Japan, Malaysia, China, Iran, Israel, Seri Lanka, and Kyrgyzstan provide web‐based services in the range of 25‐50 per cent, respectively in descending order. And the web sites of Asian national libraries (ANLs) were far from ideal and optimal as an online service provider.Practical implicationsAsian National Libraries must use the web facilities for achievement of their target goals and provision of their information services in the best manner. It is also suggested that these libraries should make high use of both traditional library tools like bibliographies and web‐based ones including web forms, chat, videoconferences, and so forth to meet their goals and ideals.Originality/valueThis study provides a unique insight into the situation of provision of web‐based services offered by national libraries in selected Asian countries.

Contents and Interactivity of National Library Websites

“…Aharony 18 revealed that the American academic libraries' websites increasing use of e-journals and web 2.0 tools. Zarei and Abazari 19 reported that the national library of Singapore provides more than half of its services via the library website.…”

“…About half of the libraries provided information about the library (50.51 %), membership/registration (42.42 %), information about library staff/directors (41.41 %) and mission statement (40.40 %). It is found that Croatia national library website provided more number of general information (22) and it is followed by Australia (19), Malaysia (18), Vietnam (18), Singapore (18) and Slovenia (18) library websites.…”

“…About half of the websites used Facebook followed by Twitter (43.4 percent 3), RSS (35.35 %) and Blog (21.21 %). It is revealed that the national library website of Canada provided more interactive applications (19) in the websites. The national library websites of Thailand (11), Quarter (11), Catalonia (9), Portugal (8) and France (8) have more applications followed by Canada national library website.…”

“…National libraries are responsible to collect, manage and preserve various kinds of resources and provide worldwide access to these resources for education and research 19 . Websites and portals are useful for marketing the resources and services of national libraries to a wider audience.…”

Web services to link interlibrary software with OCLC WorldShare

“…GIST provides different application programming interfaces (APIs) to interact with different services. For example, through the Amazon API, when a patron submits a request, the system automatically retrieves, from among other data, the price, the ratings and the recommendations, thus helping the patron to decide whether to purchase the book (Pitcher et al, 2010) The use of web-based services in libraries has increased markedly in recent decades (Zarei and Abazari, 2011). However, we should not confuse providing library services through the Internet with the specific computing concept of a web service described herein.…”