Comparative Study of home pages in university libraries web sites of Asia and Iran: top ten universities based on structural and content analysis

Home page is a gateway website to enter its content. Hence، the correctness of its structure is very important. In this information highway، the website of university library is very important to search general and special information. The aim of this research is to analyze structural and content features of home pages (in the university libraries web site of Asia and Iran top universities. The method of this research is survey one and its type is content analysis. It is a researcher made check list as a research tool. The population consists of the libraries web sites of ten top universities which include respectively(Tehran university، Isfahan university of medical sciences،Isfahan university of technology،Ferdowsi university of Mashhad، Tehran university of medical sciences، Sharif university of technology، Fars university of medical sciences، shiraz university، Mashhad university of medical sciences and Amir Kabir university of technology) and ten top universities in Asia (Tokyo university، national Taiwan university، Kyoto university، university of Hong Kong، university of Tsukuba in Japan، national university of change king، Kan university، the Chinese university of Hong Kong، Tsinghua university and Nagoya university. show that the structural feature of the most libraries web sites in the top universities is the same. There were three differences in content features including the introducing the libraries future programs (p=0. 02)، Reservation services and the attachment of library loan service. There were not considerable differences between the studied websites in content categorizing and reference to electronic resources. There were not structurally meaningful differences among the websites. In comparison among the Iranian websites and Asian ones، the Iranian websites are weak in search engines in the first page and the lake of “subject union catalogue”. Totally، the weaknesses of content were more than the structure.