Investigating the level of desirability of information in management information systems in libraries in Iran

The aim of this paper is to investigate the pros and cons of Iranian library management software, focusing on the usage of open source technology. It seeks to analyse the viewpoints of librarians in the University of Isfahan as a sample to extend the findings to the Iranian Library management software community.

In order to get the opinions of librarians, the descriptive method is used. The required data are collected by literature review, questionnaire and open interview from university top managers, software technical staff, libraries managers, librarians, end users, and companies providing similar products. However, because of time limitations, the authors could only gather data by researcher‐made checklist of the librarians (informants) who directly have worked with University of Isfahan in the libraries.

The main problem of many library management software platforms in Iran is that the focus of development is mainly on technical issues rather than management, operational, and end‐user concerns. This is highlighted when open source software is used because it is common for an off‐the‐shelf product to be used with less consideration of the nontechnical issues. This is the reason that Iranian libraries are moving to replace their software with commercial versions.

There was insufficient cooperation of some librarians in identifying capabilities and deficiencies of UILMS and limited cooperation of some technical experts in reviewing the software.

Considering the lack of standard checklists, this paper presents a relatively complete checklist to evaluate the library software.