A Comparison of Online Catalogues of Universities of Iran and England

The present research was carried out aiming to study some of the facilities of online public access catalogues. To do so, a random sample of online catalogues of 20 university libraries in England and 14 university libraries in Iran were selected. Then the catalogues chosen were studied separately using a checklist which was designed based on an initial review of online catalogues of different countries and also comparing them with research previously carried out. Findings of statistical data showed that online university catalogues of England have performed considerably better than Iranian ones in quantitative and qualitative terms regarding their design and the extent to which they include facilities required in an online catalogue. Therefore Iranian catalogues meet 56.5 % and English online catalogues meet 73.46 % of the standards evaluated in the checklist.