在美國大學圖書館中使用網際網路影響之研究
A Research on the Impact of Internet Use in American University Libraries

侯鳳雄 　Hou, Feng-Hsiung
南亞技術學院功企業管理系專任助理教授

【Abstract】
　　The purpose of this research was to explore the impact of Internet use in American university libraries' operations and to find the best way for using Internet tools in university libraries' operations. This study may offer important information about the impact of Internet usage for university library's operations. The research question was: Is the Internet usage having significant impact for organizational operations in the American university libraries? This study employed survey research to conduct the research process. Research participants were 50 administrators in 50 university libraries, Texas, U.S.A. Descriptive statistics was used to analyze the impact of Internet applied in the university libraries. Results indicated that there was a significant impact of the Internet usage in American university libraries' operations. The author suggests that university libraries' organizational leaders need pay attention to the impact of Internet usage in their business and they also need to plan how to utilize the Internet into their university libraries in the future.

【Keywords】：Internet Use、University library、Organizational Operation

【關鍵詞】：使用網際網路、大學圖書館、組織運作

【摘要】
　　本研究的目的在於探討美國大學圖書館運作中，使用網際網路對於其組織運作的影響，樣本為美國德州五十所大學圖書館。本研究是以對美國大學圖書館的管理人員進行問卷訪談，針對受訪者所屬大學圖書館的運作中，使用網際網路對於其組織運作的影響進行研究，以敘述性的統計方法（Descriptive Statistic Method）對於美國大學圖書館運作中使用網際網路的影響進行分析。研究結果指出網際網路的使用，對於美國大學圖書館的運作有顯著的影響。最後，作者建議大學圖書館的管理者應針對其所屬大學圖書館的組織特性以及不同需求，設計並使用網際網路的技術及資源，以對所屬大學圖書館的組織運作，作出最大的貢獻及支持。

1. Introduction
　　The Internet is a treasure-trove of information for any kind of organization（Troutner, 2000）. The owners and managers also believe that understanding and using Internet and other technological tools could enhance the quality of organizational operations.

1. 1 Purpose of Research
　　The purpose of this research was to explore the impact of Internet use in American university libraries' operations and to find the best way for use Internet tools in university libraries' operations. This study may offer important information about the impact of Internet usage for university library's operations.

1. 2 Research Question
　　The research question was: Is the Internet usage having significant impact for organizational operations in the American university libraries?

1.3 Significant of Research
　　Internet is an invaluable tool in nearly every organization（Shi, 1996, p.109）. An organization that cannot utilize Internet both as productivity tool and as a marketing tool may have a tremendous disadvantage compared to its competitors. This exploratory study investigated the impact of Internet use in American university libraries' operations and to find the best way for use Internet tools in university libraries' operations. This study may offer important information about the impact of Internet use for university libraries' operations.

2. Literature Review
　　This section will discuss the history of the Internet and utilizing Internet in the organization. What is known as the Internet today has its roots in a network setup by the U.S. Department of Defense in the early 1970s. In that early form, it was called the Arpanet, established by the Advanced Research Projects Agency（ARPA）. It connected various military and research sites, and was itself a research project in how to build reliable networks - in particular, about how to build networks that could withstand partial outages in the event of a war and still function. It was designed to require the minimum of information from the computer clients. Beginning in the late 1980s, the National Science Foundation（NSF）, a federal agency, started expanding its own NSFNET, using the technology developed by Arpanet. This was done to allow campuses and research centers to use NSF's supercomputer sites. But the sharing of supercomputers also allowed the connected sites to share other things not related to the supercomputer centers. As people started to discover the benefits of the Internet, such as e-mail, and as NSF started to promote universal educational access by funding college networks, Internet traffic and its popularity increased at an exponential level. Today, you cannot open a newspaper without finding some reference to the Internet. You cannot listen to the radio without hearing a company's web address announced as part of the advertisement. The Internet is becoming a major, multibillion-dollar, integral part of international business, and is estimated to have at least 200 million people online, as well as 14 million web sites.

　　The school library's library on-line could supports faculty use of computer and multimedia systems to improve teaching and learning at school. Faculty and their assistants can create instructional materials including interactive presentations, videos and web sites. Faculty can also receive help integrating technology tools into their courses such as web-based forums, list-serves and online learning management systems such as course work（Terri, 1997）.

　　D'Aveni（1994）believed that "to use Internet applications and resources, one must have a connection to the Internet. This may appear as an overly simplistic statement, but there are several levels of increasingly complex connectivity to be considered"（p.53）. This section will highlight the opinions of several researchers（ex. Semich, 1995; Yang, 1995; Mao, 1998）to describe the types of Internet connections and Taiwan's position concerning Internet connections. In the late 1960s, the Department of Defense（DOD）was confronted with the Cold War and the survivability of their bases after a possible nuclear attack. The DOD commissioned one of their agencies（the Advanced Research Projects Agency--ARPA）to create a computer network that could survive local outages but still permit communications among the nodes that survived such a catastrophe. At that time, computer manufacturers were delivering systems that implemented strictly proprietary communications protocols. So ARPA first developed a set of communications protocols that would permit many different systems to communicate. One outcome was the development of the TCP/IP（Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol）suite, which was eventually implemented into every manufacturer's computer system, thus enabling any computer to talk to any other computer.

　　Access from the home（and to the consumer）will be a driving force for Internet technologies. Any home PC owner with a modem can connect to the Internet simply by subscribing to an Internet service provider. But there will be many more ways to connect, and at much higher speeds. Cable companies, long distance companies, computer companies, and local telephone companies are all bringing the Internet to homes（Lin, 1995）.

　　There will be more nationwide initiatives concerning the Internet. There are already established protocols for a national e-mail address. Several companies provide "Digital IDs" or a "certificate" which guarantees that they are who they say they are. The Vice President's call to make the Internet accessible in every school is quickly becoming a reality. Government agencies at every level, from local to Federal, are working on some aspect of the Internet, from regulation and taxation to consumers selling their own services on the Internet. There are several ways to connect to the Internet：（a）regular telephone line;（b）ISDN;（c）cable; or（d）dedicated leased lines.

　　Generally speaking, the Internet is an intermediary for information exchange and can store vast amounts of information. It has powerful searching capabilities and can organize and disseminate information interactively, and facilitate the transaction of information-based products. For sellers and buyers, all these functions can be achieved with a lower cost than by traditional means. The Internet can provide 1）faithful reproduction of descriptive and experiential product information, 2）greatly expanded universe of offering relative to what can be accessed now through local or catalog shopping, 3）an efficient means of screening the offerings to find the most appealing options for more detailed consideration, and 4）unimpeded search across stores and brands and memory for past selection, which simplifies information searching and purchase decisions（Lin, 1997）.

　　The library's approach to information access is an important part of the environment where technology supports the classroom. The benefit of library technology are in the following:（a）Student researchers have ready access to extensive journal and book collections in disciplines relevant to their areas of study;（b）students study that support use of both print and electronic resources;（c）Students have 24-hour access to the library with support of the library and computing staff on evenings and weekends whenever classes are in session;（d）Students access databases from home, they find course syllabi and copies of reserve readings on the library's Web site, and they participate in Web-based course discussion groups; and（f）The library supports the use of these databases by providing students with instruction in using those databases in their research and writing class（Henderson, 2002）.

3. Methodology
　　The purpose of this research was to explore the impact of Internet use in American university libraries' operations. This study employed survey research to conduct the research process and the research data measured by the Survey of the Impact of Internet Use in the Library.

3.1 Research Design
　　The method employed quantitative research method in conducting this study was measure the use of Internet in various American university libraries and provided an overview of the method of Internet use in university libraries' operations. The goal of this study was to help university libraries' owners/ managers understand how important it was to integrate Internet into their business.

　　A descriptive research design was utilized to response the research question. The research question was: Is the Internet usage having significant impact for organizational operations in the American university libraries?

3.2 Sample and Participants
　　The research samples were 50 university libraries in Texas, U.S.A. The participants of this research were one administrator from each sample university library. The list of total sample information is in the Appendix 1. Next, the research employed a stratified random sample. A list of all libraries' administrators was obtained from each sample organization with position designated. The random sample was selected by assigning a number to each library's administrator in a sample organization.

3.3 Data Collection
　　In this research, the author was use survey instrumentation to collect the research data. This research was focus on the Texas State area's university libraries. The data collected from university libraries' administrators from each sample university library. The date of data collection was mid July 2002. The author went to each organization that gave and picked up a research survey from participants.

3.4 Instrumentation
　　The instrument for this research was a valid, reliable questionnaire. The instrument of this research employed Survey of the Impact of Internet Use in the Library made by author. The author states that this instrumentation could test the impact of Internet applied in the library（See Appendix 2）. Coefficient Alpha measured this instrument for the reliability and experts modified this instrument for validity. The information of reliability and validity will be discussed in next section of this chapter.

　　The survey instrument that measured the libraries' satisfaction with the performance of Internet consisted of 30 items, designed to ask about the impact of Internet use in the library. This questionnaire included six scales. The questionnaire design followed the purpose of the research and the research hypothesis to explore the possible impact between the Internet use and the organizational operation of the university library.

3.5 Reliability and Validity
　　Instrument reliability for Survey of the Impact of Internet Use in the Library was based on the fact that the author used Crobach to measure the reliability of his study scale. The reliability of each scale was assessed by Coefficient Alpha Crobanchαover 0.6. Nunnally（1967）suggests that the minimum acceptable level of reliability is 0.5. Instrument validity for Survey of the Impact of Internet Use in the Library, according to the author, enhances the validity by enhancing face and content validity.

3.6 Data Analysis
　　Statistical procedures were conducted to determine the impact of Internet use in American university libraries' operations. Descriptive statistics was used to analyze the impact of Internet applied in the university libraries. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences（SPSS）computer software program was used to complete the analysis of data. The results of data analysis are presented in Chapter Four and Five.

4. Presentations and Analysis of Data
　　The purpose of this section was to present a description of the research data and to analyze the data relating to the primary research question of the study. The primary research question was: Is the Internet usage having significant impact for organizational operations in the American university libraries? The findings in this section contain the raw data, and the narrative results relating to the research. The results are organized and discussed in three sections: source of data, descriptive statistics, and summary.

4.1 Source of Data
　　The research was conducted with 50 administrators in 50 American university libraries. Each participant completed the Survey of the Impact of Internet Use in the Library.

4.2 Descriptive Statistics for Total Sample
　　This section provides descriptive statistics results for total sample of impact of Internet applied in the American university libraries. There were 50 university library administrators who（N=50）answered these questions. The descriptive statistics was employed to test the impact of the use of Internet in the university libraries.

　　Results indicated that American university libraries administrators were agree and strongly agree for there was significant impact of Internet usage in their university libraries in following:

(1) Through the use of Internet, the user and reader can effective and efficient interaction from Internet services of university library.

(2) Through the use of Internet, the user and reader can immediately share information in the university library's online service.

(3) Through the use of Internet, the user and reader can immediately obtain the updated information in the university library's online service.

(4) Through the use of Internet, the user and reader can increase communication through using Internet in university library.

(5) Through the use of Internet, the user and reader can get more help for searching electronic databases in university library.

(6) Through the use of Internet, university library known for our users' service.

(7) Through the use of Internet, university library constantly improving our services for our users and readers.

(8) Through the use of Internet, university library knows who our users and readers are.

(9) Through the use of Internet, university library develops services to match our users and readers' needs.

(10) Through the use of Internet, university library is efficient.

(11) Through the use of Internet, university library supports the creation of information resources for the user and reader.

(12) Through the use of Internet, university library supports the management of information resources for the user and reader.

(13) Through the use of Internet, university library supports the distribution of information resources for the user and reader.

(14) Through the use of Internet, university library supports the preservation of information resources for the user and reader.

(15) Through the use of Internet, university library can clear explain services for user and reader.

(16) Through the use of Internet, university library can compare information with another library.

(17) Through the use of Internet, university library can provided clear online library catalogue for their readers and users.

(18) Through the use of Internet, university library can help the user and reader locate electronic versions of full-text journals.

(19) Through the use of Internet, university library can promote contacts and cooperation with academic departments.

(20) Through the use of Internet, university library can publicized widely new library resources, particularly electronic resources.

(21) Through the use of Internet, university library can promoted the library's electronic resources to teaching faculty and offer training in the use of these resources.

(22) Through the use of Internet, university library can advocated the incorporation of Library instruction into the university's courses.

(23) Through the use of Internet, university library can create Web-based instructional models into the university's courses.

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