1. Identifying the location of web objects : A study of library websites Vasantha Raju N. Librarian Govt. First Grade College Periyapatna vasanthrz@gmail.com & Dr. N.S. Harinarayana Reader Department o f Library and Information Science University of Mysore Mysore ns.harinarayana@gmail.com 8th International CALIBER on Towards Building a Knowledge Society: Library as Catalyst for Knowledge Discovery & Knowledge March 02-04 2011 Goa University Taeigao, Goa

2. “Library Website is the Library” -Linden “an essential ingredient in constructing the content of a website is knowing the typical users' mental model or 'schema' for the characteristic location of web objects on a website. Knowledge of this schema and constructing a site that reflects this should aid in the site's accessibility (Bernard 2001).

3. Research Questions Where do library web objects placed in the library web sites? Does the library web object appear in same location as in the case of e-commerce websites?

4. The Location of following web objects were examined in library websites

6. The location of the each of the web object was noted down in a 5 X 5 data coding sheet designed for the study.

8. <1% 1-2 3-4 5-8 9-16 17-24 25-32 33>% Figure 1: Each Grid (color) Represents the Frequency of Web Object Found in Particular Location in a Library Web Sites* The darker the shade of the blue, the greater the number of times that the particular web object was found in the particular location. * This method is adopted from Shaikh & Lenz (2006)

9. Location of the “About Us” Web object It was found that almost 30.00% (15.71% and 11.42%) of the library web sites have placed “about us” link at the upper left side of the web sites.

10. Location of the “My Account” Web object The placements of “my account” feature various across web sites, but tended towards extreme right side of the library web sites (16.66%) and the upper right side (11.11%) of the library websites as shown in figure .

11. Location of the “Search Link/Box” web object Almost 50.00% of the sites placed search link/box feature at the top right corner of the library web sites. This result resembles the previous studies on e-commerce websites (2006).

12. Location of the “Back to Home Link” web object It was found that almost 53.00% of the web sites have placed “back to home link” at the top left corner of the library web sites. The result is in line with previous studies on web objects (Bernard, 2000, 2002; Shaikh & Lenz, 2006; Adkisson, 2002).

13. Location of the “Help” Web object The placement of the help function is varied from library to library, but in most cases, it tended towards upper top of the library web sites.

14. Location of the “OPAC (Online Public Access Catalog)” web object The placement of the this feature varied across library web sites, with great number of sites placing OPAC at the top left side and middle of the library web sites (13.70%).

15. Location of the “Ask a Librarian” web object The placement of ask a librarian feature is scattered/varied from library to library. Most of the libraries placed ask a librarian feature at the right side of the library web sites.

16. Home link & logo Search Ask us About Us OPAC Help Internal links Help My Account Library Website Wireframe This website wireframe was created on the basis of the consolidated result of the study

17. Thank You ? Image courtesy : OCLC