Abstract The present study evaluates the national libraries’ websites of five countries i.e., Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS). It analyzes the domain & page authority, domain extensions, internal equity-passing links, external equity-passing links, internal links, external links, total links, followed linking root domains, total linking root domains, just discovered links, linking C blocks, spam score, types of file format and Web... The present study evaluates the national libraries’ websites of five countries i.e., Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS). It analyzes the domain & page authority, domain extensions, internal equity-passing links, external equity-passing links, internal links, external links, total links, followed linking root domains, total linking root domains, just discovered links, linking C blocks, spam score, types of file format and Web Impact Factor of five national libraries’ websites. The study explored that the domain (67) & page Authority (73) of the National Library of China was the highest, the National Library of Russia has secured the highest internal equity-passing links (79884), total equity-passing links (99661) and Total Links (101000), while, the highest external equity-passing links (22354), total external links (22592) and followed linking root domains (1674) was occupied by National Library of China. It also observed that all the selected national libraries are using 100% HTML, PDF, JPEG, and GIF file formats, followed by PNG, WMA and the lowest was MS-Word, the maximum file formats were used by National Library of Brazil (7). National Library of Russia occupied first place with highest Internal WIF, External WIF and Simple WIF of 1210.36, 326.6 and 1530.3 respectively. Read More Read Less

Abstract Internet and digital media for educational purposes have significantly improved knowledge creation. The Internet has proven itself to be a valuable resource in the enhancement of knowledge production and dissemination. The purpose of the study was to establish how excessive non-academic use of the Internet detrimentally affects undergraduate students’ daily lives. Using survey design, a total of 390 University undergraduate students comprising mainly... Internet and digital media for educational purposes have significantly improved knowledge creation. The Internet has proven itself to be a valuable resource in the enhancement of knowledge production and dissemination. The purpose of the study was to establish how excessive non-academic use of the Internet detrimentally affects undergraduate students’ daily lives. Using survey design, a total of 390 University undergraduate students comprising mainly adolescents/ young adults were selected using stratified random sampling at two South African universities, namely Fort Hare and Nelson Mandela. Data were collected using the Modified Internet Addiction Test for Undergraduates (MIATU), a modification of Internet Addiction Test (IAT) questionnaire. 282 (72.3%) use of the respondents indicated that they make use of the Internet daily with 34.8% spending more than 10 hours. More than 60% have access to at least two electronic devices. Most of the respondents stayed online longer than intended (x 2.88), slept less at night due to Internet use (x 2.63) and hence spent less time studying owing to Internet surfing (x 2.27). Furthermore, the amount of time spent on the Internet had a significant relationship with the level of influence the use of the Internet had on respondents (B = 0.250, t = 4.850, p < 0.05). The findings are indications that the excessive amount of time spent on the Internet served as a distraction from school work, a situation that put students at a disadvantage in as far as academic productivity was involved. These findings clearly suggest that the uncontrolled use of new media is both a hazard and a potential danger to academic productivity. Read More Read Less

Abstract 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... 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 easily. Moving on further, this study has been undertaken in context of library websites in Sri Lanka with the main purpose of exploring the favourable weights of the seven key dimensions and 20 measuring items with the aids of experts in the related field. These dimensions and measuring items were identified from our previous study which have been tested its reliability and validity in assessing library website usability in Sri Lanka with the aids of actual library users in Sri Lanka. Fuzzy theories together with the extent analysis fuzzy analytic hierarchy process method were applied. It was expected to identify the relative importance of the criteria of interest while avoiding uncertainty, ambiguity, loss of data, and difficulties faced in assessment cycle. Triangular fuzzy numbers were used to represent the judgments on the relative importance between each pair of factors that makes experts consensus uniform rather than using linguistic values. The research findings concluded that satisfaction was the dimension that the experts considered most important in evaluating library website usability. The experts rated accessibility as the least important dimension. Read More Read Less