Evaluating the effectiveness of multilingual library OPAC of the academic libraries in the Arabian Gulf Countries: Usability study

The study proposes to identify the status of the multilingual academic libraries’ (OPAC) Online Public Access Catalog in Arabian Gulf Countries from the design, subject, effectiveness, and distribution. The study explains the evaluation by using the usability test. The strengths and weaknesses in websites sample of study, as the library interface reflects the library services. The researcher’s aim, is to explain the students viewpoint to evaluate the academic libraries websites in four central academic libraries, which are United Arab Emiraties University, Sultan Qaboos University, University Of Bahrain, and King Faisal University. The researcher focuses on some elements of the evaluation. Traditional library serves user face to face, however, library OPAC reflects traditional libraries on the web without librarian s assistance. The researcher concludes that the results of the study will become a model for academic and non-academic sites, and open the doors for the way other sites to redesigned.