DEVELOPMENT AND USABILITY EVALUATION OF A WEB SEARCH APPLICATION FOR ELECTRONIC THESES AND DISSERTATIONS IN REPOSITORIES OF NIGERIAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

ABSTRACT

The research process that results in the production of theses and dissertations involves a detailed literature review to support areas of the research study which means search and retrieval of information related to their research must be done to reduce or avoid as much as possible the issue of repetitive research and plagiarism. Despite the large turnout of these research outputs, postgraduate students face two critical challenges in the course of their research studies. Firstly, there  are  repetitive  researches  because  of  the  oblivion  of  researches  conducted  in  other universities. Secondly, there is the issue of access to local content literature in the form of theses and dissertations to build up investigations. To address these challenges, this research study developed and evaluated a web search application for Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) in federal  university libraries  in Nigeria to solve the challenge of poor global visibility of electronic theses and dissertations from Nigeria. The study adopted an action research design and used mixed research methodology to achieve the objectives. Four research questions and six hypotheses tested at 0.05 level of significance guided the study. Seventy respondents comprising ten  (10)  institutional  repository  administrators  and  sixty  2018/2019  postgraduate  students provided the data for the study. Three sets of data collection instruments (two questionnaires, one interview guide and one observation guide) were administered to the respondents. Triangulation was used to collect data about the management of ETDS in institutional repositories based on policies, contents and system architecture. A task oriented approach was used to collect data from the institutional repository administrators for the assessment objective and postgraduate students for  the  usability  study  Data  collected  was  analysed  descriptively  and  inferentially  using frequency counts, chart, median and Kruskal-Wallis analysis of variance. Findings from the study  revealed  that  the  management  of  electronic  theses  and  dissertations  in  Nigerian institutional repositories was poor based on policies, contents and system architecture. Only half of the institution studied had polices for their repositories. In institutions where policies were available, the management of ETDs was poorly and not explicitly stated. Electronic Theses and Dissertations content in the repositories were in portable document format (PDF) and had no copyright measures. The ETD contents in the repositories were also stored in institutional servers and were not registered on the Open Archive Initiative- Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI- PMH)  framework.  There  were  few  policies  and  the  major  challenges  identified  with  the management  of  these  resources  in  the  repositories  were  content  population,  funding  and inadequately skilled staff. The ETD search application was designed using PHP, WAMP and MySQL. The six hypotheses tested revealed that there was no significant difference in the opinion of postgraduate students on the usability effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction of the application based on information and transactional queries. The study recommended an ETD policy framework, a content populating workflow and a funding framework for the effective management of ETDs in institutional repositories.

CHAPTER ONE

1.0 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to the Study

Universities were established with the mission to train a high-level and skilled workforce for national development. According to the National Policy on Education (2013), university education must make significant contributions to national development by providing and developing high-level workforce through quality teaching, learning, and research. The combination of teaching, learning, and research roles can assist in achieving this mission highlighted in the policy through the transfer of information and knowledge.

To achieve this contribution, the cardinal roles entrusted on universities which research is one and the most important should be encompassing and conform to international standards, in terms of conduct, management, dissemination, and preservation. This view is not surprising as research is a pivot that links teaching and learning and in the opinion of Oyedum et al. (2015) is an assessment criterion to indicate the level of understanding of the teaching and learning exercises. It is against this context that various researches are carried out in our ivory towers every year. University libraries serve as channels for the access and preservation of these research outputs, which include, journal articles, conference proceedings, theses and dissertations to mention but a few. These libraries participates essentially in the collection, dissemination, and preservation of various research outputs in support of the attainment of the research missions and visions of their parent institutions. Of these research outputs, theses and dissertations form the bulk of which universities attach much importance.

Theses and dissertations are documents of Masters and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) students that present research investigations and findings which form part of the graduation requirements recognised by many universities worldwide. Not only do these ‘intellectual core’ of universities present the significant research and scholarship of the universities they represent, but they are also a valuable historical record of the research and teaching community (Middleton et al., 2015). Alam and Pandey (2012) acknowledged the well-established fact that theses and dissertations have for a while been the foundation of higher education across the world. They believed this important primary source of information is the result of focused and extensive studies and findings guided by experts in the field over a defined period. Ifijeh (2014) also stated that theses contain crucial research findings which can be used and implemented in industries and different sectors of the economy in Nigeria.

Theses and dissertations are a useful origin of information pertaining to research for prospective graduate students, researchers and decision makers (Alam and Pandey, 2012). Thus, there is a need for future accessibility and preservation of these vital information resources for posterity. On the contrary, however, Han (2014) noted that theses and dissertations are not usually accessible through the usual distribution channel of scholarly publication and distribution. This author further stated that within the traditional libraries’ workflow, these resources are either partially catalogued or not catalogued at all, thus making them difficult to access. Alam and Pandey (2012) also stressed that the non-publishing status of theses and dissertations have, over time, made university libraries and archives the only access points; thus making accessibility a difficult task. These points have made retrieval of information about theses in Nigeria an uphill task.

The reason  for this is obvious, hitherto  to the Internet era,  university libraries had  limited archived, printed theses and dissertations. However, Internet technology and the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), changed the paradigm. Printed copies of dissertations come in an electronic format whose printed copies have either been digitised or are born electronic copies and stored in repositories of university libraries. E-theses was defined by the Digital Access to Research Thesis-Europe (DART-Europe) as an electronic equivalent of a printed thesis. An advantage of the e-theses is the multiple access to a copy of the completed thesis. The ease of access is because millions of users can view just one electronic copy of a thesis, which was quite challenging with the printed copies. Also, the future preservation of theses and dissertations have been made easier with electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) which is a welcome development especially for libraries in developing countries that over the years have been grappling with the preservation of print theses and dissertations.

The National Policy on Education (2013) posited that since universities’ research are relevant to the nation’s developmental goals; particular attention must be paid to the promotion, conduct and dissemination of original research and knowledge with the global community. This position is in line with the global open policies to information and knowledge, whose mission is increasing the visibility and accessibility of research output. Open-access (OA) literature are digital, online and free in terms of prices and most copyright and licensing restrictions (Suber, 2015). An important reason, as stated by Prost et al. (2015) to make dissertations widely available and accessible, is that it would increase the visibility and impact of an institution’s scientific output. They further presented other arguments in favour of open access to theses and dissertation to include quality, representativeness, new ideas, and extensive literature.

The formulation of open access policies and mandates was to ensure that research information is freely accessible. According to Bruns and Inefuke (2016), these policies and mandates have since gained  increased  acceptance  amongst  scholars  and  librarians  alike  due  to  the  serial  crises, increased demand for information, information explosion and the moral justification of paying for government-funded research. The initiative was envisaged to significantly solve the inaccessibility gap of scientific and research information between developing and the developed world by facilitating the free accessibility and exchange of scholarly publications. Canada (2009) also stated an advantage the open access movement created, which is the possibility of providing an equal opportunity of accessing knowledge to all countries, irrespective of their status. Open access  enables  researchers  put  out  their  findings  to  a  worldwide  audience,  which  in  turn increases citations made to their scholarly work. Research output can be accessed through any of the two paths to open access recommended by the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI), which are the OA Institutional repositories (IRs) and OA journals.

The development, design and implementation of institutional repositories (IR) in academic libraries have since 2002 been growing at a steady pace when Clifford Lynch declared them as pertinent facilities for scholarly publishing in the digital times (Ramirez and Hanlon, 2011). Open access repositories were the first initiative of the Institute of Technology, Massachusetts, United  States  of America  in  the year  2000. The project  objective was  to  come up  with  a sustainable long-term digital archive which shall give favourable leverage to study issues on access control, copyrights management, versioning, retrieval, community feedback, and flexible publishing capabilities. Twenty years after, academic libraries all over the world have tapped and are still tapping into the institutional repository project. Since then, libraries have leveraged on the advantages repositories offer to have an archive of information resources for their institutions. This scenario is not surprising as the essential elements of repositories tally with the traditional role libraries play which is to collect, preserve and disseminate information resources, thus making it a viable technological tool that represents physical libraries in the digital environment.

A repository is a digital information resource archive, library or warehouse that enables access to information resources, findings from researches, students theses and dissertations to mention but a few, deposited with the consent of the authors. Significant challenges facing libraries like dwindling budget and increasing subscription rates for electronic resources, space management, high information demand and information explosion made institutional repositories a viable alternative of information accessibility for libraries all over the world (Sengupta, 2014). Thus, libraries ‘own’ these resources which have been an issue of contention between libraries and publishers of subscribed e-resources, in addition to having interoperable institutional repositories which provide access to IRs in other institutions. With this, libraries in Nigeria would have more sources of information which would quench the information thirst of their users and also increase their e-resources databases for accreditation purposes. Stephen et al. (2015) stated that IRs are online solutions for the collection, preservation, and dissemination of findings from tertiary institutions. The authors, however, stated that IRs have metamorphosed to a publishing platform for libraries to visualise the institution’s scholarship.

E-theses repositories are digital archives of electronic theses and dissertations established to improve and increase the accessibility of researches which hitherto were hidden and locked away in university libraries.   Institutions of learning and libraries worldwide have adopted and supported this initiative because of the advantages of visibility and accessibility of research output  that  comes  with  it  in  the  wake  of  invisibility  of  scholarly  research  output  from Africa.   Suber (2008) reiterated that “theses and dissertations are the most invisible form of useful literature and the most useful form of invisible literature”.

Gul et al. (2015) also stated that theses are highly confidential documents in higher institutions that were always put under locks, thus debarring scholars from accessing the researches and findings contained in them. This situation is very frustrating and discouraging for postgraduate students undertaking their research studies, because dissertations are essential origin of information which in the opinion of Sengupta (2014) contains detailed and often unexplored information, including methodology about a particular research area or concept. Accessibility outside the institution thus becomes complicated when submitted in print format. A situation which is not pleasant because in the opinion of Mohee (2016) carrying out research is not enough on its own, the use of the research output matters because it is through the uptake of research that the knowledge developed is made visible and usable.

Furthermore, there is a continuous emphasis on the dearth of research information for postgraduate researchers in developing countries like Nigeria. The Database of African Theses and Dissertations (DATAD) initiative pointed out that research findings from Africa are not often indexed in major international databases; the situation is worsened by the rigid access to theses and dissertations completed in the region, which contains local empirical information and data not available in international literature. Justifying the need for open access to research, Kleinman (2011) stated that new research usually depends on prior research. How then would these ‘prior research’ be found if Christian (2008) and Ezema (2011) stressed that research generated over the years are in different libraries in Africa which makes accessibility difficult for scholars and students. This development according to Ezema (2011) makes African researchers depend highly on the information generated from the developed countries of Europe and the USA which in no small extent may not follow the format and context of African problems. In Nigerian libraries, the production of theses and dissertations is minimal, and the copies available for public access are in print and physically consulted in a university library (DATAD, 2014).

This situation in addition to the strict and stern policies in place when accessing theses and dissertations is discouraging for Nigerian researchers and research students especially now that libraries all over the world have transited to an era where web technology has become pertinent for the dissemination of scholarly information and communication. Similarly, researchers may not be able to attend many related conferences or follow the vast range of publications available (Alhoori  et  al.,  2015). They  may  not  also  access  the vast  amount  of  research  information published in local journals that are not accessible online, especially in developing countries. In some quarters,  it  has  also  been  argued  that  the slow  pace  in  socio-economic  and  political development in Africa has a link with inadequate information to propel knowledge and development (Ezema, 2011).

The several advantages of having these repositories in institutions of learning consequently propelled Nigerian University libraries to develop and implement repositories.  The Directory of Open Access Repository (DOAR), the ranking web of repositories and direct search by this researcher revealed that 12% of university libraries in Nigeria have functional stand-alone repositories which contain ETDs and other digital resources. Interestingly, of this percentage, 72% of these repositories are owned by Federal universities while 21% and 7% are owned by private and state universities respectively. Some of the public university repositories used open- source repository software for development and implementation, while others built proprietary software to manage their collections.   However, the downtimes of these repositories and their contents have been low over time.  Findings have revealed that most Nigerian IRs are ineffective and underutilised (Hinmikaiye, 2015; Valde, 2016) with contents falling dramatically after the initial take-off of the repositories. Direct interactions and observation by this researcher revealed some technical and managerial issues not reported in the literature. For example, some of these repositories are still running on older versions of DSpace (an open-source repository software) or have contents especially theses and dissertations uploaded after the initial take-off of the repositories. This situation must be the reason why scholarly information in the form of theses and dissertations from the country and even the continent has not been reflecting in the global scholarly articles. Also, from observation, this researcher noticed that postgraduate students find it challenging to access literature (especially theses and dissertations) online in their areas of interest especially from Nigerian University repositories despite the humble efforts of some institutions at developing repositories.

Corroborating this, Venitha (2015) stated that the research capacity of higher education postgraduate research output is exceedingly low in Africa with African universities producing less than 1% scholarly articles globally. Further compounding the issue of accessibility of theses and dissertations in Nigeria is the fact that there is no fully functional integrated or federated ETD  repository  system  in  Nigeria.  Valde  (2016)  believes  that  the  content  mass  of  one institution’s repository is insignificant to be worth visiting to browse and search through even if all the theses and dissertations are available in full text. Also, Halbert (2014) advocated for a sole and  separate  repository  for  ETDs,  giving  the  advantages  of  improved  access  and  usability because of specific workflows and metadata related to these resources.

This is true, especially in the wake of the rise of subject repositories. The view of Dahlen and Hanson  (2017)  resonates  with Valde (2016)  and  Halbert  (2014),  the  authors  advocated  for discovery tools for library resources stating that they provide a simplified interface which returns fewer results in comparison to general search engines. Roy et al. (2016) also stated that the open manner these research outputs are being generated has made it challenging to preserve them in a centralised system which can support distributed processing. In turn, the researchers are not familiar with the different interfaces; thus, they find it difficult to find what is available to them. Sarkar and Mukhopadhyay (2010) corroborated the opinion of Roy et al. (2016) when they stated that researchers’ expectations of access to e-resources have also changed and they would prefer a single search interface or access point for e-resources. Rose-Wiles and Hofmann (2013) also justified the advantage of search discovery tools when they stated some librarians are sceptical  about  the enormous  burden  of sorting  and  evaluating  results  from  general  search engines that yield too many and irrelevant results.

There are also limited or no source that contains relevant information on these resources in universities. For instance, universities that have their resources catalogued online do not provide bibliographic details of theses and dissertations. Similarly, as this researcher observed, compiled directories or theses abstracts are not published periodically by the different universities, neither do  weekly  news  bulletins  published  by  universities,  or  the  postgraduate  schools  carry information about completed theses and dissertations. Even the universities with functional repositories do not have documented submission workflows for populating the theses and dissertation community of their repositories. The unavailability  of submission workflows  is evident in the number of theses and dissertations available in these repositories as at the time of preliminary investigations by the researcher. The situation implied that these repositories were developed and implemented without putting into consideration the peculiar case of Nigeria vis-a- vis technical and managerial issues that have most likely affected the sustainability of these repositories. Roy (2013) opined that there would never be a set of unified best practices for digital  repositories  because  diverse  organisational  needs  cannot  support  a  single  group  of recommendations that would function well in all situations. The researcher, however, stated that frameworks provide overall guidance which can be of benefit to individual organisations. Furthermore,  usability  evaluation  is  indispensable,  thus  it  is  embedded  in  the  design  and implementation of information systems. Usability, according to Federici and Borsi (2010) is assessed by the level of interaction between a designed system and a user. It involves the process of identification of challenges or improvements with designed systems when users interact with the system within a defined environment. (William et al., 2013).  Some qualities mentioned by Rubin and Chisnell (2008) that makes a product or service usable includes- accessibility, how efficient, and effective the system or product is, the ease of learning how to use it and how satisfied users are after using it. Aliyu (2015) also stated that usability depends on how effective the system features matches with needs and expectations. A peruse of literature on the usability of  repositories  in  Nigeria  have  not  been  reported  in  the  literature  even  though  studies  on institutional repositories constitute a high percentage in the Library and Information Science discipline (Joo et al., 2011).  Madan and Dubey (2012) stated that usability is essential in the design and implementation of successful and interactive software applications.

Several usability models reported in the literature include Eason usability model, Neilson usability model to mention but a few while methods reported in the literature as approaches, methods, and techniques for usability evaluation include heuristic evaluation, subjective quantitative evaluation, interviews, log analysis to mention but a few. Randolph et al. (2015) suggested two usability evaluation methods: usability testing that requires observation and recording of behaviours and activities of users testing the product. The other method is the inspection method that involves usability professionals viewing the product to identify usability defects. According to the authors, the end-user testing is better because systems are user-centred designed, and thus, feedback from users is imperative. Emphases are on the awareness, acceptance, and availability of repositories without putting into consideration the usability of this technology vis-à-vis its purpose.

Abubakar  and Ahmad  (2013)  asserted  that  several  researchers  have  pointed  to  behavioural intention as the most critical determinant of the use of a particular technology. However, behavioural intention or satisfaction is influenced by several usability factors such as effectiveness, effort expectancy, efficiency, performance expectancy, and ease of use to mention but a few. Informational, transactional, and navigational queries are also relevant queries that determine the usability intent of users on search retrieval systems and software. Classifying the three queries based on people’s use of web search systems, Jasen et al. (2008) stated that users base web search systems services on a variety of purpose that encompasses the three queries. The researchers reported that they are navigational tools that take users to specific uniform resource locators (URLs) or to aid in browsing, conduct e-commerce transactions in addition to finding out information.

Search queries, according to Gabbert (2018), are words and phrases that people type into a search box to come up with informational, navigational or transactional results. According to the authors, informational queries are queries used when a piece of information is needed. Transactional queries, on the other hand, are used when a user intends to complete a transaction like a download or purchase an item while the intention of navigational queries are queries made to find a particular website or webpage. The navigational query was expunged because it does not fit into the scope of the web application. The web application is subject-specific (for ETDs); thus it cannot be used to navigate other websites. Evidence from literature also indicated that majority of usability studies are about system design principles, verification of its usability vis-a- vis the intended purpose or the improvement of the design of an existing system. In Kuthuria et al. (2010) study, web search engines queries were categorised into three, and the researchers mentioned that users’ intent was more on informational query than navigational or transactional queries. This study subjectively evaluated the usability of the webware vis-à-vis the intended purpose (informational and transactional purposes).

As the number of digital contents continues to skyrocket, users around the world would continue to rely on the Internet as their first port of call for information resource retrieval.  Although there are no hard and fast rules as to how libraries can reduce this trend of relying on the Internet, librarians can take advantage of this technology by designing and developing library aligned systems and applications that are user-centric, efficient and effective (Onaifo and Rasmussen, 2013). They can also ensure increased access to their contents through interfaces that would guarantee the time effectiveness of the user. It is posited that an interface application that would bring together ETDs from the available repositories would be user-centred and be a viable, cost- effective  alternative  to  commercial  ETD  repositories  like  ProQuest. This  in  the  opinion  of Kennedy (2019) will place libraries as major players in the value chain around the production of knowledge. Based on the aforementioned, it is necessary to assess the existing institutional repositories, identify the challenges vis-à-vis polices, contents and technical issues and design a single web search system that allows for search and retrieval of ETDs in whichever stand-alone repository the ETD is domiciled.

1.2       Statement of the Research Problem

Theses  and  dissertations are part  of graduation requirements  in  over twenty  federal  owned universities in Nigeria yearly. The research process that results in the production of these outputs involves a detailed literature review to support areas of the research study which means search and retrieval of information about theses and dissertations related to their research must be done to reduce or avoid, as much as possible, the issue of repetitive research and plagiarism. Despite the large turnout of these research outputs, postgraduate students face two critical challenges in the course of their research studies. Firstly, there is the issue of access to local content literature to build up empirical investigations and evidences. Secondly, there are repetitive researches because of the oblivion of researches conducted in other universities which usually wastes the researchers’ time and resources when discovered. For instance, in 2016, a doctoral student’s work in one of the universities under study was turned down at the proposal level after putting in much effort and resources over a period of two years. The reason given for the action was because the research study the student wanted to embark on, was already a finished research study in another university, and the student was fortunate that a visiting professor from that university was on the proposal panel, else he would have embarked on an already conducted research.

Schopfel and Soukoya (2013) opined that research might not be the political priority for most countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Nigeria inclusive due to significant social and economic challenges. They, however, agreed that there is a consensus effort for open access to scientific information to foster scientific development and integration with the global research community. This consensus effort yielded over twenty-five stand-alone IRs with ETDs in Nigeria (Open DOAR);  fifteen  of  them  owned  by  federal  universities.  However,  with  the  advances  in technology and the ever-growing effort to meet users’ information needs in less time, these stand-alone repositories in Nigeria have not solved the challenges identified either. The situation thus remains the poor visibility and accessibility of these resources and a cycle of repetitive researches  in  universities  with  postgraduate  students  claiming  oblivion  of  research  studies conducted in other universities.

The reason is that there is no uniform or integrated point of search interface or portal for ETDs in Nigeria, which is the application area for the problem. Also, there are technical issues with the repositories that to the best of the researcher’s knowledge has not been reported in the literature. The Nigerian Research and Education Network (NgREN) launched a federated repository for Federal Universities in 2017, but this also did not help much because of limitations related with institutional policies and in Arlitsch and Grant (2018) opinion unwillingness to abandon local control. It is against this backdrop therefore that this study assessed the existing stand-alone repositories, recommended sustainability frameworks and designed a single web search system that allows for search and discovery of theses and dissertations in the stand-alone IRs the ETDs are domiciled.

1.3      Aim and Objectives of the Study

This study developed and evaluated a web search application that retrieves electronic theses and dissertations from institutional repositories of Federal University Libraries in Nigeria.

The following objectives achieved the aim of the study:

1.  assess the policies, contents and system architecture of ETDS in institutional repositories (IR)

of federal university libraries in Nigeria using the DELOS digital library model;

2. identify the sustainability challenges of institutional repositories in Nigeria;

3. develop a web search application that harvests electronic theses and dissertations from stand- alone repositories of federal university libraries in Nigeria;

4. perform a usability evaluation of the developed web search application;

1.4 Research Questions

The following research questions guided the study.

1. What policies, contents, and system architecture exist for stand-alone ETDs in repositories of Federal university libraries in Nigeria?

2. What are the challenges affecting the sustainability of institutional repositories?

3.  What  type  of  web  search  web  application  for  harvesting  ETDs  in  repositories  can  be developed for Federal university libraries in Nigeria?

4. Is there a statistically significant difference in the opinion of postgraduate students on usability of the developed web search application?

1.5       Research Hypotheses

The following null research hypotheses were formulated to guide the study and tested at 0.05 level of significance:

H01- A statistically  significant  difference  does  not  exist in  the opinion of  the postgraduate students in the three universities on the information query usability effectiveness of the web search application

H02- A statistically  significant  difference  does  not  exist in  the opinion of  the postgraduate students in the three universities on the information query usability efficiency of the web search application

H03- A statistically  significant  difference  does  not  exist in  the opinion of  the postgraduate students in the three universities on the usability satisfaction of the web search application

H04- A statistically  significant  difference  does  not  exist in  the opinion of  the postgraduate students in the three universities on the transactional query usability effectiveness of the web search application

H05 – A statistically significant difference does not exist in the opinion of the postgraduate students in the three universities on the transactional query usability efficiency of the web search application

H06- A statistically significant difference does not exist in the opinion of the postgraduate students in the three universities on the transactional query usability satisfaction of the web search application.

1.6 Significance of the Study

The findings of this study will be beneficial to the following- postgraduate students, researchers, institutional repository administrators, university libraries, National Universities Commission, and experts in the field of library and information science.

The recommended sustainability frameworks and recommendations would assist university library administrators, and repository administrators sustain their repositories. The frameworks would also help university libraries yet to develop their repositories to avoid some of the pitfalls identified in this study and develop sustainable repositories. When fully implemented with live repositories,  the designed  web  search  system  would  effectively  assist  postgraduate  students undergoing  their  research  studies  in  the  course  of  their  literature  search  and  help  reduce duplicated researches.

The  developed  web  search  application  can  be  integrated  into  the  E-learning  management platform of universities as a supporting information resource for students. University libraries in Nigeria  can  include  same  in  their  resource  catalogue  for  their  users  and  for  accreditation purposes.

The findings  of this study and the designed system will serve as a framework for Nigeria Universities Commission or any government agency that may be responsible for the design of a unified e-theses repository for universities in Nigeria in future. Similarly, institutional repository administrators in other institutions like Polytechnics and Colleges of Education can as well use the findings and proposed ETD policy and designed webware as a framework for establishing, developing and integrating their repositories.

Finally,  the  findings  of  this  study  would  be  an  added  contribution  to  the  knowledge  of information system design and implementation in the field of Library and Information Science.

1.7 Scope and Limitations of the Study

The  contents  scope  in  the  repositories  assessment  were  electronic  theses  and  dissertations (ETDs). The research study did not replace or build a model repository. It worked with existing repositories to develop the search application.

The study also focused on federal university libraries in Nigeria, other private and state universities with functional repositories in Nigeria or other Nigeria were not included.

The population for the usability evaluation were Agriculture postgraduate students, other users (researchers, undergraduate students) were not included.

The methodological scope of the study was in the use of simulated stand-alone repositories in order to have total control on the workability of the repositories and achieve the aim of the research.  This  limitation  makes  the  search  application  ‘laboratory  ready’,  thus  cannot  be deployed as a ‘market-ready’ research product.

1.8 Operational Definition of Terms

The following terms were operationally defined within the context of the work.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs): These are the digital format of Masters and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) theses and dissertations uploaded for use in repositories of federal universities in Nigeria.

ETD Repositories: They are digital archives for the electronic format of theses and dissertations in federal universities in Nigeria.

Informational Query Effectiveness: Level at which the developed web application is used to successfully access or get theses and dissertations in Nigeria universities.

Informational Query Efficiency: The ability of the developed web application to successfully access or get information about theses and dissertations without wasted effort or energy.

Informational Query Satisfaction: How fulfilled postgraduate students are with the developed web application in successfully accessing information about theses and dissertations.

Institutional  Repository  (IR):  An  archive  or  storage  facility  for  the  research  outputs  of academic staff and students of Nigerian universities which include journal articles, monographs, datasets, theses and dissertations and so forth.

Transactional Query Effectiveness: Level at which the developed web application is used to successfully retrieve or download theses and dissertations.

Transactional Query Efficiency: The ability of the developed web application to successfully retrieve and download information about theses and dissertations without wasted effort or energy.

Transactional Query Satisfaction: How fulfilled postgraduate students are with the developed web application in successfully retrieving and downloading information about theses and dissertations.

Postgraduate Students: These are students that have a first-degree and are studying for an additional degree or certificate in Nigerian   federal universities.

Usability     Evaluation:     An     assessment     testing     of     the     designed     web     search application to verify how usable it is based on efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction.

Webware: Design of a web application that serves as a single point of access to ETDS in library repositories in Nigeria

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