The factors and criteria for prioritization of GIS utilization by libraries

This paper aims to identify the impressive factors on choosing the type of the libraries and information centers and determining their significance and prioritizing them and finally determining the priority of each type according to the identified factors to implement geographic information system (GIS) in the library researches.

A combination of documentary, Delphi and analytic methods was used in the current study. Due to the interdisciplinary nature of the topic in mind, different dimensions of the issue were firstly identified through reviewing the research literature. Then, the Delphi panel was formed and the factors and indices for choosing and prioritizing the libraries were extracted and finally the analytic-hierarchy and Topsis method was used for analyzing and ranking the data which were collected through a questionnaire. In this way, the instrument was devised by the researcher and the population under the study consisted of the professors in two fields of LIS and the GIS. The criteria include the “access to the library”, “being active”, “the number of sources”, “the size and space of the place”, “the library equipment”, “compatibility” each one include eight, seven, five, five, two and five factors, respectively.

In the Delphi study, six factors including 32 indices were determined for prioritizing the libraries to implement the GIS in the library researches. The analytic-hierarchy method was applied to compare the factors correspondingly in terms of the degree of their significance. In this way, “access to the library sources”, “being active”, “the number of sources”, “the size and space of the place”, “the library equipment” and “compatibility” were identified as the factors on choosing the library type with the values of 0.39, 0.24, 0.16, 0.08, 0.07 and 0.06, respectively. Then, several types of the libraries were ranked and the findings show that academic libraries are prioritized as the first one for conducting the GIS projects.

Employing the factors resulted from the conducted researches is recommended for choosing the libraries to implement the GIS, so that the researches in this interdisciplinary field become more organized. To extend the current study, the extracted factors and indices can be sent to the professors of the LIS from the other countries to elicit their insights and thereby, designing a standard international checklist for choosing the libraries and information centers in the GIS projects.