Evaluation of the Information Architecture of Astan Qods Razavi Digital Library Website

Background and The library website acts as a scientific gateway to communicate with researchers and students, and these websites can meet their information needs if they have the desired information architecture. The purpose of the current research is to evaluate the website of Astan Quds Razavi Digital Library based on information architecture indicators. The research method is applied and descriptive, and the checklist was used to analyze the organization system, tagging system, navigation system, and search system of the website according to the three layers of the information architecture (content, user, and context). The results of the inspection lists showed that the Astan Quds Razavi Digital Library website scored 23 out of 37 points in the organization section, 44 out of 57 points in tagging, 55 out of 78 points in navigation, 26 out of 46 searches; To increase the level of user satisfaction and the efficiency of websites, it is necessary to fully implement the principles of information architecture in their design; By identifying the weak and strong points of the website, this research can be a suitable source for planning regarding the optimization of the website architecture. This research tries to express the weaknesses and strengths of this website and its effectiveness by providing a systematic evaluation of a case study for the Astan Quds Razavi Digital Library website. According to the findings of the research, the website is in good condition with 62%, 77%, and 70% points respectively in the components of organization, labeling, and navigation systems; The weaknesses of the organization plan were more than the type of organization structure. The lack of geographic, audience-oriented, and organizational chart-based plans and the lack of support for social classification are among the most important weaknesses of the website organization system. Not using sequential labels was one of the most important weaknesses of the labeling system; Failure to implement the local navigation system and site map is one of the weaknesses of the navigation system. With 56% points, the search system is in an average condition and cannot correct typos in the input query, remove stop words, find words with the same pronunciation as the input query, find words with the same string as the input query, and rank the search results. The identification of the results based on the relevance of the ranking is one of the weaknesses of the search system.