[Evaluation of digital library of Tehran University of medical sciences using structural standards of academic digital libraries]

Introduction: spite of many studies conducted on digital libraries, there are a few studies on the evaluation of this type of library. The present study was an attempt to determine similarities and differences between Tehran University of Medical Sciences Digital Library against the Structural Standards of an academic digital library

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Methods: this was an observational study in which the data was collected by a check list developed by the researcher. The check list was constructed by evaluating the best digital libraries in 2010 from Digital Library Federation point of view, facilities in an academic libraries and a literature review. Then, TUMS Digital Library was compared with all components in the check list to determine the similarities and differences. Finally, descriptive statistics [average and percentage] were presented using SPSS software

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Results: the study showed that TUMS Digital Library just met 22.3 percent [8 components] of the standards including university news, electronic journal, staff name, Email, telephone number, databases, physical library work time, address and membership in the library

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Conclusion: it seems that the reason for calling this library a Digital Library is just based on possessing several electronic resources and TUMS digital library does not conform with a standard digital library. However, besides having features of a traditional library, a digital library should have special characteristics which will be discussed in this study