A Comparative Study On Content And Design Of University Library Homepages Between China And United States

As the Internet rapidly developed, it has covered every aspect of social life at a tremendous pace. Information communication is stepping over the limitation of space and region, more and more influencing people’s work and life. An increasing number of university libraries connect wide area network(WAN) by Campus Network(CN), libraries is no more limited by traditional service in a face to face way. Webpage is becoming one important standard of measuring the development level and a new approach of library public information service and resource sharing. University libraries get much more numerous academic resources from Internet, meanwhile, university libraries webpage is a window to show the academic and service of the university to outside world, also a medium to improve the utilization of the electronic document resources. As the symbol of library and the important tool of daily use for students, university library webpage conveys a bran-new service concept. So, it is more and more important if the library homepage design is reasonable. How to design library homepage to make the content abundantly, interface friendly and literature searching rapidly and accurately, for students to use library resource more conveniently and frequently, has become the striving direction of webpage designers.This paper makes use of the various research methods, including the document investigation, information retrieval on Internet resource, comparison, synthesis, case analysis, etc. Sum up and analyze the similar tendency and dissimilarity of China and American university libraries homepage through investigating and researching each fifty China and American universities. Base on absorbing and applying previous research achievement, combining Chinese cultural atmosphere in research, making a thorough inquiry on what kind of website design could really provide students an effective use, and offer a valuable project design to domestic university libraries on how to provide students better service.