ACCEPTANCE DESIGN MODEL FOR LIBRARY WEB SERVICES:ENHANCE FEATURES OF UUM WEB ONLINE PUBLIC ACCESS CATALOG (OPAC)

ADEBAMBO HAMEED OLUSEGUN School of Technology, Operations Management & Logistics Universiti Utara Malaysia segham003@yahoo.com

ABSTRACT Huge amount of money has recently been invested into the Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC) as a result of the changes in the expectations of the users of digital library. This investment and reconstruction are expected to increase the usefulness and the acceptance of the library web OPAC. However, despite this reconstruction and the huge investment, there are still limitations to the usefulness and the acceptance of the web OPAC. This study aims as determining the factors that enhance the usefulnes and acceptance of library web OPAC. This study used the general methodology for design research to develop a library web OPAC prototype and determine the factors that enhance the acceptance of library web OPAC, increases the usefulness, ease of use and the interactivity of the library services among the users. This study was based on Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) andsurvey questionnaire was used to collect data from 40 respondents for the evaluation of the developed prototype for itsusefulness and acceptance among the users. The findings of the study shows that tagging, book rating, adding suggestion are features that enhance the usefulness and acceptance of library web OPAC. Keywords: Online Public Access Catalogue, Acceptance, Prototype,Usefulness.

INTRODUCTION Irrespective of the huge investments in information technology over the recent decades, there still exists a concern to the extent to which such investments yield the desired goals and benefits. One of the issues of this concern is whether the technology will be accepted or rejected by the potential users. However, the factors that determine the acceptance of technology such as web OPAC have to be determined and understood in order to help in designing implement to reduce the risk of rejection. Technology acceptance is a process through which technology is communicated over a specific channel in a period of time within the memebrs of a social system(Rogers, 2003). According to Dillon & Morris (1996), acceptance is the willingness of the users to employ the use of a technology in achieving the task for which it is designed to do. Many previous researches on technology acceptance have investigated the factors influencing the adoption of technology among users but few if at all focused on the features that can enhace the acceptance and usefulness of digital library among users. Researches have shown that technology acceptance theories are more concern with the potential users and the factors that influence the adoption of a technology by the users that have options of not using the technology but not with the unintended uses or non discretionary uses of a technology.

Researhcers affirm that certain characteristics must be possesed by a technology to enhance its acceptance and usefulness. According to Dillon and Morris (1996), relative advantage, triability, observability, complexity and compatibility are the characteristics that must be possessed by a technology before it can be accepted by the user.. However, Davis (1989) affirms that perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use are the major factors that determine the acceptance level of system application.Perceived usefulness is the degree to which a user believes that the use of a digital library will enhance his or her performance and the quality of having utility and especially the worth or applicability of the system. The issue in this study is whether web OPAC in a digitallibrary system can be used to achieve some desired goals based on the functionalities and the services provided by the library systems. User interface includes the physical and the logical components by which interaction between human and machine takes place by allowing the user to manipulate the system and/or allowing the system to indicate the effects of the manipulation made by the users. Generally, the goal of library service providers is to enable the users use the library system easily and achieve their desired aim of using the system. Certainly, some systems can be used to train users in order to overcome the difficulties encounters when using the systems interface. This can be achieved by giving the users specific tasks to perform on the system, while users do not need to relearn the system from the scratch, but only need to remember how to use it based on their previous experience (Nielsen, 1993). Recently, Ozel and Cakmak (2010) statedthat web OPAC has been undergoing reconstruction as a result of the change in user expectation and the inadequacy of the OPAC to determine the information resources needed by the users. However,Yu and Young (2004) emphasized that there is yet a development in implementing the success of users searching the library catalog despite the series of studies that have been conducted on OPAC over the last few years. The recommendations of the researches and techniques have fruitfully been included in the web search engines which its recognition has affected the attitude, expectation and the behaviors of the users when using the user interface of the OPAC (Yu & Young, 2004). The main motivation for researching into the OPAC of library system is as a result of the fact that most students which are the main users of the library system usually use the web Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC) to source for information on their assignments and research works. However, it was observed that students still complain about the usage of the OPAC as a result of the difficulties of the use of the library user interface. For example, neccessary information are provided for students on the usage of the OPAC in digital library. However, it was found in the preliminary study conducted by this researcher that library OPAC service is not well accepted and utilized by the students as they prefer to use another alternative search engine such as google for their academics.As such, the test on the acceptance of library web OPAC system will be examined in order to determine the factors that influence the acceptance of library OPAC to increase the usefulness and acceptance. The Objectives of the Study The objective of this research is to determine the factorsthat enhance the acceptance of library web OPAC and apply the technological acceptance model (TAM) to evaluate the acceptance and usefulness of the features.This study will be significant to increase the acceptance of the library web OPAC by increasing the interactivity between the user and the interface, usefulness and ease of use of the web OPAC. Also, this study will highlight the features and

factors that enhance the acceptance of web OPAC andcontributes to the body of knowledge in the domain of research.

REVIEW OF LITERATURE Web OPAC has newly been viewed in the work of Ozel and Cakmak (2010) to be undergoing modernization as a result of the change in user expectation and the inadequacy of the OPAC to determine the information resources needed by the users. Users of the traditional library OPAC are constrained from making their own collection, share, rating the collections and further get access to their collections with the other users of the OPAC unlike the social networks that allows (Wenzler, 2007). However, most library catalogues do not allow their users to partake in the cataloging to this extent which thereby limits the usefulness of library web services. Most researches that were conducted between 1980s and the present time centering on web OPAC have been able to attend to system design and the behaviors of the user of OPAC (Yu and Young, 2004) including: User demographics, search behavior, knowledge of the system, knowledge of subject matter, library settings, search strategies and OPAC systems. Yu and Young (2004) further stated that research on OPAC engaged the use of several data collection methodologies such as: experiments, observations, interviews and questionnaires. However, It was reported in the research work of Larson (1991), Tolle and Han (1986), Moore (1981) and Hildreth (1985) that subject searching is the most popular and widely used mode of searching on the OPAC but it is regarded as the least flourishing. Larson (1991) explained that subject searching is mitigated with several problems and are faced with decline in search index due to the increase in the size of the database. Therefore, a library 2.0 catalog is introduced to alleviate the limitation of subject searching mode. A Library 2.0 catalog produces supplementary metadata from the wisdom of library users to enhance the worth of the OPAC and should enable the recommendation of tittles from the users in the collection based on the reading habits and descriptions of their co-users. This has a great potential to profit the users in many ways. Chalon et al. (2008) suggested that incorporation of choices (folksonomies) such as commenting, tagging, book suggestion based on loan, spell checking and faceted searching into the OPAC will assist in enriching the usefulness of user interface and make the users feel at ease to use the interface and thereby increase the usability and the acceptance of the OPAC interface. Furner (2007) provided that with OPAC 2.0, library users may insert comment or ratings to books they have been borrowed and make suggestions for the reading of the books to other users who have not borrowed the book and can also tag the books they have read in the library. All these information provided can assist other users to know if the book they want to read will satisfy their needs or not. The following functions referred to how web 2.0 technologies are capable of enriching the usefulness and enhance the acceptance of OPAC: Commenting: the possibility for a user to add a comment to the record of a book. Rating: the possibility for a user to add a rating usually represented by a maximum of 5stars, to the record of a book. Tagging: the possibility for a user to add a tag, a free keyword, to the record of a book. Book suggestion based on loans: when looking at a book's record, a user may get suggestions based on loans of users that have also borrowed the book currently seen.
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Conceptof Technology Acceptance The cause that motivates a potential user of a technology influences the acceptance and the use of the technology (Davis, 1989). Potential user tend to use or not use a system if they perceive the extent to which the system will help them achieve better performance. Also, perception of the potential on how the user thinks a system will be easy for him to use will influence his acceptance of the system. According to the model of technology acceptance, perceive usefulness and ease of use ofa technology detrmines the behavioural intention which in turns results into the actual usage of a system (Davis, 1989). Perceived usefulness in TAM is the degree to which a user believes that the use of a system will enhance his performance and the quality of having utility and especially the worth or applicability of the system (Davis, 1989. Perceived ease of use is the degree to which the user believes that using the system will make him free from effort. Nielsen & Tahir (2001) refer to ease of use as a steady state of performance for experienced users to use the interface of a system on a continuing basis. However both the perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use are specific perceptions towards a system and are hooked to users specific beliefs about the system.According to TAM, both the perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use have significant impact on users towards their acceptance of a system. Taylor andTodd (1995); Davis (1989) refers to the behavioral intention to use a system as a modeled function of the acceptance and the usefulness and thereby determines the actual use of a system. Though, researches conducted by Taylor &Todd (1995) shows that the behavioral intention is the most powerful predictor of actual system usage. The study of Xu et al (2010) categorizes the factors that influence the acceptance of technology into environmental factors, individual factors and servicing factors. The individual factors include the retrieval capabilities of the user on his searching knowledge and the individual knowledge to use computers in a diversified situation. Schepers and Wetzels (2007) explained that the environmental factors relates to the external elements that stimulates the user into searching for literature from the OPAC while the system characters signifies the quality of the function and the content of the OPAC which increase the usefulness and the ease of use of the of the OPAC and thereby increase its acceptance.

Perceived Usefulness Behavioural Intention Perceived ease of use

Actual Use of the System

Figure1. Technology Acceptance Model Many studies have been conducted on TAM to examine how the model explains the acceptance of Information technology by the users. Selim (2003) investigated TAM with webbased e-learning system, where the relationship that exists between the perceive usefulness, perceive ease of use and the intention to use the system was tested. He concluded and provedthat perceive usefulness and perceive ease of use of the e-learning system are good determinants of its acceptance. Similar study was conducted by Lee, Cheung and Cheng (2005) where they used LISREL program to inquire into the adoption of web based learning system by universities students. They combined TAM with the motivational model and included perceive enjoyment with perceive usefulness and perceive ease of use into TAM. Their result revealed that the perceive usefulness and perceive ease of use impact the students attitude towards their intention to use the system.However, perceive ease of use was concluded not to have a relationship with the attitude. Also, system and learners characteristics was added by Pituch & Lee (2006) and these added variables were hypothesized to impact the perceive usefulness and perceive ease of use. Using structural equation modeling techniques revealed that the system characteristics determines the perceive usefulness of the system. The acceptance of OPAC can be improved in an institution when the online environment is given a high consideration. This was shown in the research conducted by Latifah & Ramli (2005),in which it was concluded that better technological facilities such as internet availability is one of the facilities that should be provided to enhance the adoption of elearning. Folorunso et al. (2006) indicated technical support and infrastructure technology as constituting the environment. Also, it was reported by Rafael & Sudweek (1997) that reliable technology facilities provide a good environment that will allow students to accept e-learning. This goes in line with the acceptance of the library web OPAC.The research conducted by Noble and OConnor (1996) found that the attitude of the user is an important predictor that indicates whether the user of the OPAC will accept the OPAC. This was supported by Tibenderana et al. (2010), where the concluded that users attitude and behavior has a relationship with the usage of library services. Venkatesh, et al (2003) and Davies et al. (1989) indicated that attitude for using a technology is of high significance influence on the behavioral intention of using the technology. It was concluded in the work of Vankatesh and Davis (1996) that computer self efficacy plays the role of a determinant in perceived ease of use both before the use and after the use of the technology. Grandon, Alshare andKwan (2005) also stated in their study on e-learning that the
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self efficacy was found not to have a direct significant on the intentions of student of perceive ease of use to use e-learning.Additionally, the study conducted by Mungania and Reio (2005) found that there is a significant relationship between user disposition and self efficacy. They therefore concluded that users self efficacy in using a system should be taken into consideration by educational practitioners. This is generally regarded as the users self confidence in finding materials using the OPAC. This study adapted TAM to study the acceptance of the UUM Library OPAC prototype. Technology acceptance model (TAM) is regarded as the most suitable among the models for studying the users acceptance of technology using the theory of reasoned action (TRA) and the theory of planned behavior (TPB) as basis (Ajzen, 1985 and Davis, 1989).This is as a result that TAM remains the most relevant and broadly used framework to study the acceptance of a technology. The main belief behind TAM is that it is determined by the behavioral intentions of the users which centers around the users perceive usefulness and perceived ease of use of the technology. In this study, Tagging, faceted searching and suggestion, access to collections (users profile) and feedback were suggested as the features that enhanced the perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use of UUM library web OPAC. This in-turn leads to the behavioral intention of using the OPAC system. User can further suggest the book borrowed to the other users or to the library admin based on loan. When books are borrowed from the library, the user can tag the book borrowed which can be viewed by other users of the library. Also, faceted searching enriches the perceived usefulness of OPAC by narrowing the searching of the user to access other documents of the library and thereby achieved a desired result for the query. As a result of the above mentioned discussion, the research framework for this study is presented.

Tagging

H1 H2
Perceived Usefulness

Comment

H3
Book Rating

H5

Behavioral Intention to use Library OPAC

H6
Internet Availability

H4

Perceived Ease of Use

Figure 2. Research framework for the Acceptance of Library OPAC Hypotheses The hypotheses for this study are shown below:
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H1: H2: H3: H4: H5: H6:

There is a significant relationship between tagging and Perceive usefulness to use Library OPAC There is a significant relationship between comment and Perceive usefulness to use Library OPAC There is a significant relationship between book rating and Perceive usefulness to use Library OPAC There is a significant relationship between internet availability and perceive ease of use of Library OPAC There is a significant relationship between perceived usefulness and behavioral intention to use Library OPAC There is a significant relationship between perceive ease of use and behavioral intention to use Library OPAC

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY This study used TAM as the theoretical framework to determine the features that influence the acceptance of UUM library web OPAC.This study randomly selected forty (40) participants across the three colleges in the university among the UUM students which represents the major users of the library. 50% of the selected participants are postgraduates students and the remaining 50% are undergraduate students of the university. Questionaire was used to garther data from the participants and which was filled in two phases. The first phase contains question about the participants background and their experience about library web service usage and the second contains questions about the features that enhance library web OPAC. Knowledge Flows Process Steps Awareness of Problems Proposal Proposal Outputs

Suggestion
Circumscription

Tentative design Tentative design Artifacts

Development

Evaluation
Operation &Goal Knowledge

Performance measures

Conclusion

Results

Figure 3. General methodology for design research (GMDR)

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FINDINGS AND RESULT The result of this study shows that 34% of the respondents are male while 66% were females out of which 58% of the respondents are between the age of 18 25, 28% of the respondents fall between 26 40 years of age and the remaining 14% are above 41 years of age.60% of the respondents are degree (undergraduates) students, 30% are master students and 10% are Ph.D students. Also, it was revealed that 56% of the respondents happened to have no working experience, 38% have below ten years working experience while 6% have more than ten years working experience. The respondents were evaluated to measure the users satisfaction and the effectiveness of the functions on the proposed functionalities on Library webOPAC. The questionnaire measured the effectiveness, usefulness and the ease of use of the proposed web OPAC. However, they highly agree that the folksonomies (Taging, Book rating, and comment adding) on the OPAC will enhance the usefulness of the web OPAC. The following results were deduced from the hypotheses tested: Hypotheses H1 Results There is a significant correlation between the perceive usefulness of OPAC and the behavioral intention to use the library OPAC. Therefore, perceive usefulness enhance acceptance of OPAC. This is supported by the study of Davies (1989); Taylor and Todd (1995) and Venkatesh (2003). The result of the test for this hypotheses shows a significant correlation relationship between the perceive ease of use of OPAC and the behavioral intention to use the library OPAC. Therefore, it determines the actual usage of OPAC. This is supported by the study of Davies (1989); Taylor and Todd (1995) and Venkatesh (2003). The result shows tagging can influence the perceived usefulness of the OPAC which indicates that it can enhance intention to use the OPAC The result of the test indicates that comment can enhance the perceive usefulness to use the OPAC which can in-turn determines the behavioral intention to use the OPAC The result shows that rating has a low correlation with the perceive usefulness to use OPAC. It was revealed in the test that internet availability enhances the perceived ease of use of OPAC and can in-turn dictate the behavioral intention to use the OPAC. This relates to the work of Folorunso et al. (2006); Latifah and Ramli (2005) which stated technological infrastructure as a factor that influence the adoption of e-learning.

H2

H3 H4

H5 H6

CONCLUSION AND RECCOMMENDAION This study was able to find out the following as the factors that influence the acceptance of library OPAC and the factors are summarized below:Tagging of books, book rating and adding comment to book were shown in this study to have significant relationship with perceived usefulness of library OPAC which were further proven to influence the perceived usefulness of the OPAC.Availability of internet is another factor that was discovered in this research to enhance how the user of OPAC perceives the ease of use of the library OPAC.Moreso, perceive usefulness and perceive ease of use of the library OPAC now determines the behavioral intention of the users towards the actual usage of the library.An alternative web OPAC was developed (prototype) for UUM web OPAC which includes some web 2.0 features that was evaluated and found to really help the acceptance of the web OPAC and this prototype was recommended for University Utara Malaysia and other institutions of higher learning. As a result of the scope of this study, future works can be done to close the gap that was created by this study. The one who wants to venture into the future works on this project would be advised to follow each and every single step of his project to serve as the basis of developing the following features that will be beneficial to the users of OPAC: Provides the user of the OPAC to be able to upload books for tagging in the library which has to be verified by the library administration before the book is approved. Provides the user of the library OPAC to be able to download the tagged books. Simplifying the text to display and thereby reducing the amount of the vertical scrolling by the users.

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