4. Showcasing University Library on The
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IJNGLT, MAY 2019, VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 WWW.IJNGLT.COM Showcasing university library on the web: a comparative and informetric study of the websites of private universities in West Bengal SHOWCASING UNIVERSITY LIBRARY ON THE WEB: A COMPARATIVEAND INFORMETRICSTUDY OF THE WEBSITES OF PRIVATE UNIVERSITIES IN WEST BENGAL SujanBandhu Chakraborty Asst. Librarian, Brainware Group of Institutions, 398, Ramkrishnapur, Barasat, Kolkata – 700125 E-mail:[email protected], Phone: 9163278886 Solanki Chakraborty Librarian, Central Modern College of Education, 156, M.N.K Road, Baranagar, Kolkata – 700036 ABSTRACT To meet the demand for effective information among the students community, the academic institutions are now developing dynamic websites to convey the facilities and infrastructures they have. This is very fruitful, not only for the current students of the institutions but also for the prospective future students who are planning to take admission in those institutions. Library is one of the integral parts of an academic institution. For any higher education institution library play a very important role to support the academics, research and development etc. This paper has attempted to evaluate the contents and accessibility features of library available in the websites of ten private universities in West Bengal. This study has been carried out from March 09, 2019 to April 09, 2019. For the evaluation of the websites certain criteria were set and at the end ranks were given based on the observations. It was observed that most of the private universities in West Bengal developed their university websites as a part of the minimum standard required. As a result the web presence of their libraries was not at all satisfactory in most of the cases. Some suggestions have been recommended based on the observations at the end for future improvements. Keywords: Content analysis, web presence, library website, private university, West Bengal. 1. INTRODUCTION Global education business is going through a change due to revolution in information especially in the field of World Wide Web (WWW) and information is one of the main pillars of education. Academic institutions are now providing in-depth information about the courses, facilities, and other resources they have through their institutional websites. Library is an integral part of an academic institution. Therefore, it is very much obvious that the academic institutions, especially higher education institutions, should 1 | P a g e International Journal of Next Generation Library and Technologies (ISSN 2395 – 5201) IJNGLT, MAY 2019, VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 WWW.IJNGLT.COM Showcasing university library on the web: a comparative and informetric study of the websites of private universities in West Bengal provide all the necessary information about their library on their institutional websites. A dedicated library website or web page on the university's website is a very effective tool for publicizing and showcasing library services. The present study has made an attempt to do a comparative analysis of web presence of the private university libraries in West Bengal. 2. BACKGROUND Information is emerging as one of the main competitive assets in present global education business. In fact, information is a key to drive business advantages. Therefore, proper and effective information in education is an inevitable demand. Being is a key provider of information, the library of an academic institution should have a dedicated website or webpage to provide the online services and information to the users. In last ten years or so, ten private universities came into existence in West Bengal. These Universities are: Table A: List of private universities in West Bengal with their year of establishment Name of the Private Universities in West Bengal Year of Establishment 1. Adamas University-[AU] 2014 2. Amity University (Kolkata)-[AUK] 2014 3. Brainware University-[BWU] 2016 4. JIS University-[JISU] 2015 5. Seacom Skills University-[SSU] 2014 6. Sister Nivedita University-[SNU] 2018 7. St. Xavier University-[SXU] 2017 8. Techno India University-[TIU] 2012 9. The Neotia University-[TNU] 2015 10. University of Engineering and Management (Kolkata)-[UEMK] 2014 The present study is an exploration to find out how the above listed ten private universities are giving importance to their library and how they are providing effective information, links of various library services on their institutional websites. 2 | P a g e International Journal of Next Generation Library and Technologies (ISSN 2395 – 5201) IJNGLT, MAY 2019, VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 WWW.IJNGLT.COM Showcasing university library on the web: a comparative and informetric study of the websites of private universities in West Bengal 3. LITERATURE REVIEW SN Archana and SH Kabir (2010) evaluated the web presence of the engineering college libraries in Kerala. They found majority of the websites of engineering colleges in Kerala had least representation of their respective libraries. A study by Kannappanavar, B.U., Jayaprakash and M MBachalapur (2011), analised the content of Engineering College Library Websites in Tumkur District, Karnataka. They found that Engineering College libraries were not maintaining a separate library website, and limited information was provided through their institution website. PreedipBalaji B. and Vinit Kumar, (2011) assessed the use of web-technologies in delivering information services by technological universities in southern India as presented in library websites. The study found that the rate of dissemination of information services through web was satisfactory. Wijayaratne, Anusha (2013) found that the university libraries had marked their presence gracefully in the cyberspace in Sri Lanka. Savitha, K. S (2016) examined the contents of websites of deemed university libraries of Karnataka, India. The analysis revealed that a good number of universities provided general and basic information about their libraries in their respective websites. Majority of the universities offered access facility to their subscribed databases, OPAC etc. Sandeep Kumar and Mahendra Singh Mir (2017) studied the web content of the library websites of Central Universities of Central India and they found that all four Central Universities had Web OPAC, access to digital library, database access, and plagiarism checking software, etc. on their library pages. Soumya Singh Tomar, Mohammed Imtiaz Ahmed and Amarjit Kumar Singh (2018) found, in their study on National Law University libraries in India, that the universities had poor representation of their web- identity. They suggested that the universities required giving a thought on this regard. A recent study by AnanyaDasgupta and Meghmala Gupta (2019) examined the library web presence of technical colleges of West Bengal through content analysis and they found that the websites are developed as a routine organizational matter, rather than a conscious process. 3 | P a g e International Journal of Next Generation Library and Technologies (ISSN 2395 – 5201) IJNGLT, MAY 2019, VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 WWW.IJNGLT.COM Showcasing university library on the web: a comparative and informetric study of the websites of private universities in West Bengal 4. OBJECTIVES The present study was initiated with the following objectives: To find out the amount of effective information given about their libraries by the private universities in West Bengal on their institutional website To find out the content on library provided in the library page or website To find out whether minimum basic information about the library were given or not To do a comparative study of contents of library webpage or website To evaluate the importance given on the web presence of the library on university website To rank the universities based on the score on the criteria of evaluation 5. METHODOLOGY At first, an in-depth search has been conducted using the websites of the private universities of West Bengal, available in UGC website during March09, 2019 to April 09, 2019. Table B: List of private universities in West Bengal with their Website URL University Website URL 1. Adamas University-[AU] www.adamasuniversity.ac.in 2. Amity University (Kolkata)-[AUK] www.amity.edu/Kolkata/ 3. Brainware University-[BWU] www.brainwareuniversity.ac.in/ 4. JIS University-[JISU] www.jisuniversity.ac.in/ 5. Seacom Skills University-[SSU] www.seacomskillsuniversity.org/ 6. Sister Nivedita University-[SNU] www.snuniv.ac.in/ 7. St. Xavier University-[SXU] www.sxuk.edu.in/ 8. Techno India University-[TIU] www.technoindiauniversity.ac.in/ 9. The Neotia University-[TNU] www.tnu.in/ 10. University of Engineering and Management www.uem.edu.in/uem-kolkata/ (Kolkata)-[UEMK] To analyse the content and accessibility features of the library pages or site on the institutional websites of the private universities in West Bengal, the following criteria were set: Availability of Library Webpage or Library website or Library section in a page in the websites of the Universities to access from outside of the campus. 4 | P a g e International Journal of Next Generation Library and Technologies (ISSN 2395 – 5201) IJNGLT, MAY 2019, VOLUME 5 ISSUE 2 WWW.IJNGLT.COM Showcasing university library on the web: a comparative and informetric study of the websites of private universities in West Bengal Availability of basic information about the Library in the library webpage/ university website on the internet. Under this category, some subcategories were framed such as, About the Library and Library