Browsing by Author "Jayasekara, P.K."

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3

Assessment of Satisfaction of the Participants in 16th Colombo International Book Fair
(Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Kelaniya, 2015) Jayasekara, P.K.
The Colombo International Book Fair (CIBF) has been, the Sri Lanka‘s premier national book fair organized annually by Sri Lanka Book Publishers Association since 1999. The 16th CIBF was held at the Bandaranaike Memorial International Conference Hall (BMICH), Colombo, Sri Lanka, from September 10th to 17th 2014 from 9.00 am to 9.00 pm., which comprised over 400 stalls consisted with local and foreign publishers. Other than selling books with discounts, it provides opportunities for author and reader discussions, book signing, great variety of food stalls and some other carnival-like activities. The number of participants to the CIBF is not good evidence about the successfulness of it. User satisfaction is one way criteria to measure the successfulness. Thus, objective of this research is to measure the user satisfaction about the 16th CIBF. Data was collected using an online questionnaire which developed using Google forms. The target group was the members in a Facebook group called "Poth Kiyawana Aya" that consists of 54,901 members in September 2014. The objective of this group is to share ideas about books among friends around the world. The URL of the online questionnaire was published in that Facebook group to get responses. 526 people have responded to the questionnaire within a one week period. 42% respondents were not satisfied with the support provided by the staff in the stalls and 36% said that they received satisfactory support. The overall satisfaction about the 16th CIBF was 37.9% and nearly half of the visitors (51.6%) was not satisfied about it. Overcrowding was the major reason behind less satisfaction. Increase the duration of the exhibition and spacious stalls will reduce the overcrowding. The organizers must develop plans to reduce queue time at the entrance and at the cashier and providing proper parking facilities will help to increase the customer satisfaction.
The Expansion of Publication of Newspapers and Periodicals: A Study Based on Newspapers and Periodicals Published in India from 2001-2013.
(Department of Library and Information Science, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka., 2017) Abu, K.S.; Jayasekara, P.K.
Newspapers and periodicals are one of the main sources of information utilized by individuals to keep them up-to-date regarding current happenings in the world and also to know about other information related to entertainment and leisure. The readers of a newspaper or periodical vary with its periodicity and the language. Publishers are mainly focused on the publishing publications with highest demand to achieve maximum profits. Hence, the identification of existing publication trend is important to become a successful publisher and to achieve huge reader population. Thus, the main objective of this study is to identify the most popular periodicity and language of newspapers and periodicals. The data for this study were extracted from the database namely Open Government Data (OGD) Platform India (data.gov.in). To identify the expansion of publication of newspapers and periodicals, data were extracted from OGD secondary database from 2001 to 2013 period. The findings revealed that the periodicals which published on weekly basis followed by monthly basis periodicals were the most popular throughout the considered period. In terms of language of the publication from 2001-2013 Hindi language periodicals had the highest number of publications which is followed by English language publications. Consequently, publishers must focus on publishing Hindi and English language periodicals published weekly and monthly basis to achieve vast reader population and to generate enormous profit.
Users’ Searching Behavior Patterns in Library OPAC of University of Ruhuna: A Follow-up Study.
(Department of Library and Information Science, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Kelaniya,Sri Lanka., 2017) Hettiarachchi, N.; Ramanayaka, K.H.; Jayasekara, P.K.
The use of ILS for library services has been growing rapidly over the years and plays an enhanced role compared to its traditional physical library while providing a wide variety of library services to its users. OPAC is considered as a one of major outcome of ILS while it provides an online bibliography of a library collection that is available to the public.The present research was undertaken in order to identify the mostly utilized search fields by patrons and the searching behavior of undergraduates from different faculties in University of Ruhuna with referencing Library OPAC in relation to user profile during 1stJanuary 2012 and 31stDecember 2016. The data, collected from the searching history records kept by the patrons’ user profiles, were processed and statistically analyzed. The findings of this study revealed that the OPAC searching was heavily used by undergraduates, i.e. 79.43% out of 17168 total searching frequencies. Furthermore, the highest number of searching (27.34%) was done in year 2013 while searching from the keyword option was become the most popular (56.72%) term followed by the title (17.54%) and author (13.13%) terms.ISBN was identified as an underutilized search field. On the other hand, the highest number of searching (29.02%) was done by the Faculty of Science patrons and then Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (28.69%). When patrons use keyword option as a searching field, OPAC performs the searching process by matching the requested word pattern in every place in the bibliographic records. As a result, the number of results is in high number and patronsneed to put more effort to filter required sources. Patrons can be used other searching fields like title, author, ISBN to obtain required information with minimum effort. Hence, librarians must design user training programs to emphasize the importance and ways of using different types of search fields to obtain specific search results effectively and efficiently.