Purpose: The purpose of this research is to evaluate the websites of museums of Iran and to identify their strong and weak points.
Methodology/Approach: Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, this research evaluates the websites of 27 Iranian museums using a checklist called MuseumQual. In 2008 Fotakis and Economides evaluated the websites of English museums using this checklist. Websites were evaluated against six criteria: content, presentation, usability, interactivity & feedback, e-services, and technical. Furthermore, the results of this evaluation were analyzed through interviews with museum experts.
Findings: The findings of the evaluation show that the websites of Iranian museums score average for content (average score: 2.70), usability (average score: 2.6), e-services (average score: 2.8) and technical (average score: 2.69); the websites score well for presentation (average score: 3.14) but they score poorly on interactivity and feedback (average score: 0.94). The interviews indicated that the main problems of museum websites in Iran were inadequate budgets, lack of attention by officials to the necessity of creating websites, constant changes in managerial decisions and consequently lack of a united policy in planning, lack of understanding of the importance of the issue, and irrelevant expertise of managers of museums and those responsible for planning.
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