Purpose: This research aims to evaluate the user interfaces of the English web pages of selected national digital libraries, based on the established criteria found in the resources to propose a suitable interface for the Payame Noor University digital library. Method: This research employed a survey and descriptive methodology. A checklist included 10 main criteria and 114 sub-criteria was used for evaluation. The study population included digital libraries from various countries including America, Australia, France, Swiss, New Zealand, Netherland, Poland, Japan, India and Italy. Data analysis was performed using SPSS software and Excel. The hypotheses and questions were tested by t-test and Friedman-test. Findings: The conclusions indicated that 50% of criteria were met by 50% of libraries. The American library ranked first, meeting 70.40% of criteria, followed by France at 62.07% and Swiss at 40.12%. Also the interface language criterion was the most frequently implemented, with a usage rate of 6.68%. User control was the least implemented used also at 6.68%. Conclusion: The research findings indicate that the most libraries have been successful with the general criteria, and the majority of points earned pertain to adherence to these general criteria on their website pages. In particular, no attention has been paid to the criteria encompassing the scope of digital libraries’ duties, as per definitions. As observed in the findings, the interface language criterion shows the highest level of compliance. One possible reasons for this consistency across all libraries may be that the primary language in these countries is not English, leading to efforts aimed at enhancing user convenience and greater interaction of the user through careful attention to writing-related aspects on the pages. Furthermore, compliance with writing points and brevity of sentences is a key category in web pages design.
Ghaffari et al. (Tue,) studied this question.