First International Conference on Behavioural and Social Science Research (ICBSSR 2012)

First International Conference on Behavioural and Social Science Research (ICBSSR 2012)

Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, Kampar, Perak, Malaysia, 2 November 2012

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The Acceptance Design Model for Evaluating the Adoption of Folksonomies in UUM Library WEB OPAC

Adebambo Hameed O.a, Raji Ridwan A.b, Akanmu Semiu A.a,b,*

aSchool of Technology Management and Logistics, Universiti Utara Malaysia, Sintok 06010, Malaysia.

bSchool of Multimedia Technology and Communication, Universiti Utara Malaysia, Sintok 06010,Malaysia.

a,b,*School of Computing, Universiti Utara Malaysia, Sintok 06010, Malaysia.

Abstract

Irrespective of the huge investments in information technology over the recent decades, there still exists a concerns 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 and rejection of technologies should be determined and understood which will thereby help the designers to design and implement in order to reduce the risk of rejection. Acceptance is operationally defined as the willingness of the users to employ the use of a technology in achieving the task for which it is designed to do. Hence, 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. This study focused on the factors that influence the acceptance of the web OPAC, because the OPAC serve as the online public access catalogue that allows the services of the library to be availed by the users. Technology acceptance model (TAM) will be used to evaluate the usability of the alternative web OPAC in order to determine its acceptance. Questionnaire is distributed across the total number of 50 students in order to evaluate the acceptance and the adoption of folksonomies in the library search in web OPAC.

Keywords: [Folksonomies, Web OPAC, Technology Acceptance Model, System Evaluation]

Concept of Technology Acceptance Model (TAM)

TAM explain 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, answers the questions of whether the system can be used to achieve some desired goals based on the functionalities and the services provided by the library systems. It includes the question of whether the functionality of the system in principle can do what is needed and how well a user can use the functionality (Davis, 1989). Nielsen &Tahir (2001) refer to ease of use of user interface 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.

Todd& Davis et al (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.

This research 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).This is as a result that TAM remains the most broadly used

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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 (user’s profile) and feedback were found to be the features that enhanced the perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use of UUM library 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.

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) it was concluded that better technological facilities such as internet availability as one of the facilities that should be provided to enhance the adoption of e-learning. 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 & O’Connor (1996) indicated 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.

Research Methodology

This study employed the use of quantitative research approach to evaluate the features that enhance the acceptance of library web OPAC among UUM students. The quantitative research approach is a means for testing objectives and theories by conducting an examination of the relationship among variables which has the tendency of being measured by instrument to enhance the use of statistical procedures for the analysis of the collected data (Creswell, 2008). Therefore, a random sampling technique was used to gather forty (40) students in which twenty (20) of these students are postgraduate while the remaining twenty (20) were undergraduate students of the university. Questionnaire was used in collecting primary data for the evaluation of the library Web OPAC features and the data gathered from the questionnaire was analyzed with SPSS version 16.0 to determine the acceptability of the library OPAC features.

Evaluation

Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) was adapted to assess the satisfaction and the acceptability of the newly suggested and developed system interface by the students of UUM. According to Dillon (2001), TAM remains the most popular model used in assessing the acceptance of technology and will be therefore be suitable for this project. Also, a demo of how the system works was shown to the chosen participants and they were further given a set of questionnaire to evaluate their perception towards the usefulness and ease of use of the Interface.

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Research Framework

According to Sekaran (2006), framework regards to the conceptual model that logically links and shows the relationship among the factors that were identified be important and affect the problems. The interrelationship among the variables that are of importance to the investigation that is being conducted is shown in the framework. Therefore, research framework will help the researcher to postulate hypothesis

and further assist in testing and understanding the relationships that exists between the variables.

Research framework for the Acceptance of Library OPAC

(Source: Adapted from Venkatesh et al. (2003)).

Hypotheses

H1: There is a significant relationship between perceived usefulness and behavioral intention to use Library OPAC

H2: There is a significant relationship between perceive ease of use and behavioral intention to use Library OPAC

H3: There is a significant relationship between tagging and Perceive usefulness to use Library OPAC

H4: There is a significant relationship between comment and Perceive usefulness to use Library OPAC

H5: There is a significant relationship between rating and Perceive usefulness to use Library OPAC

H6: There is a significant relationship between internet availability and perceive ease of use of Library OPAC

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Result

Table 1: Summary of the test of Hypothesis

Hypotheses / Variance/Significance / Results
H1 / 0.461, p<0.01 / 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.
H2 / 0.642, p<0.01 / The result of the test for this hypotheses shows a significant correlation between the perceive ease of use of OPAC and the behavioral intention to use the library OPAC. Therefore, it determine the actual usage of OPAC
H3 / 0.531, p<0.01 / The result shows that tagging can influence the perceived usefulness of the OPAC which indicates that it can enhance intention to use the OPAC
H4 / 0.441, p<0.01 / 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
H5 / 0.732, p<0.01 / The result shows that rating has a low correlation with the perceive usefulness to use OPAC.
H6 / 0.653, p<0.01 / It was revealed in the test that internet availability enhances the perceive ease of use of OPAC and can in-turn dictate the behavioral intention to use the OPAC

Conclusion

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 determines the behavioral intention of the users towards the actual usage of the library.

Future Work

Future works can be done to close the gap that was created during the working of this project. 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.

·  This study is conducted on a small sample size; therefore, the generalization of the result of the findings may not be totally applicable. Future researchers are hereby required to investigate a related study of this nature using a larger sample size.

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Reference

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