A Survey of E-Readiness of Academic Libraries in Ahvaz from the Viewpoints of Directors and Librarians

This research attempted to investigate the e-readiness of academic libraries in Ahvaz from the viewpoints of their directors and librarians to identify their strengths and weaknesses in terms of e-readiness dimensions, and to offer suggestions to improve their services. The research is of a descriptive-analytic type and a survey method was used. This study used Noorafruz, Hariri, and Hanafizadeh model (2010) and the model based on IUP (Mutula & Van Brakel, 2006) presented by Noroozi and Jafarpur (2011) as well as the international STOPE model used in Badamchi Wayghan (2012) to formulate three questionnaires. The validity of the questionnaires was determined using facial validity method and the reliability of the questionnaires was measured through Cronbach’s Alpha. Descriptive statistics including frequency, frequency percentage and mean were used. To determine the normality of distribution of the data, Kolmogorov-Smirinov test was applied. To measure the e-readiness dimensions of the libraries One-sample t-test was used. Findings showed that in general, the libraries are at “medium’ level in e-readiness. The libraries were not significantly different in terms of different dimensions of e-readiness; however, directors were significantly different in their e-readiness. It seems that libraries need to reconsider every aspects of e-readiness to reach a level of readiness appropriate for the information society of today. Since it is important to pave the path for every dimension of e-readiness to serve the clients better, library directors and university chancellors must focus on these dimensions.