Measuring Dhaka University students' perceptions of ease‐of‐use and their satisfaction with University Library's online public access catalogue

The main aim of this paper is to assess Dhaka University students' perceptions of ease‐of‐use and their satisfaction with University Library's online public access catalogue (DUL OPAC).

A survey questionnaire was developed and used to collect data on students' demographics, online catalogue use and their perceptions of ease‐of‐use and satisfaction with OPAC. In order to analyze the influence of students' demographic and individual characteristics on their perceptions and satisfaction, Mann‐Whitney and Kruskal‐Wallis tests were carried out.

The results showed that students are overwhelmingly satisfied with the DUL OPAC. Although there are some differences in students' perceptions of and satisfaction with the university OPAC, a formal task‐based usability testing and adopting a user‐centered design can ensure the usability of the OPAC in the future. The paper suggested some heuristic guidelines for designing interfaces for online catalogues.

This is the first time an effort has been made to assess students' perceptions of and satisfaction with a library OPAC in Bangladesh. The authors feel this study may encourage more such research on usability evaluation of OPACs in Bangladesh and beyond.