This study aims to evaluate the web performance of academic library online public access catalogues (OPACs), which function as the primary interface between users and library resources. The study assesses key performance indicators across desktop and mobile platforms, identifies common technical issues that affect website efficiency and proposes optimization strategies to enhance loading speed, responsiveness, visual stability and overall user experience.
Using a quantitative, evaluative approach, this research analysed the Web performance efficiency of the OPACs of academic libraries. The evaluation was conducted for both desktop and mobile versions of the selected OPAC websites. The main evaluation tool used in this study is Google PageSpeed Insights, which provides an analysis of key performance metrics including First Contentful Paint (FCP), Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Total Blocking Time (TBT), Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) and Speed Index. All of these metrics together shed light on the aspects of loading performance, interactivity and visual stability of the catalogue interfaces.
The results reveal significant variations in performance among academic library catalogue websites, with some of them being quite slow in loading, resulting in interactivity being delayed and having unstable layouts. Metrics such as LCP and TBT indicate a significant impact on user experience due to inefficiency in resource loading and heavy scripting. Common issues observed across the evaluated websites include render-blocking requests, inefficient cache lifetimes, font display problems and LCP-related issues.
The study investigates the OPAC interfaces of the top 20 universities identified in the Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) Global 2000 rankings for 2024 using a single performance evaluation tool to assess their functionality. Future research may include multiple testing tools across additional websites to achieve an in-depth evaluation of usability and site performance.
The findings of the study provide useful insights that librarians, Web developers and university administrators can use to enhance OPACs’ performance, loading speed and overall usability, thereby contributing to efficient and seamless access to library materials.
Improving the performance of library websites can enhance access to information for students, researchers and the general public, thereby supporting digital learning, information accessibility and knowledge dissemination.
This research adds new perspectives to the topic by applying metrics of global Web performance in the systematic evaluation of the OPACs of academic libraries. By selecting OPACs as the core subject of the research, the study provides a scientific basis for promoting performance-based techniques in the areas of user satisfaction and the institution’s digital reputation. Consequently, the research contributes to the literature on library website evaluation and provides empirical evidence that supports the latter-mentioned strategies.
