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Semantics and accessibility are naturally part of HTML by design. Therefore, there is a must to significantly leverage the standard markup language and write the cleanest code possible. The purpose of this work is performing HTML validity check in terms of compliance with W3C standards for home pages of Iranian digital and electronic libraries in order to pave way for applying semantic technologies in Iranian Library websites. This is a comparative survey. 82 library software-based digital libraries and 68 electronic libraries were identified via Google search in the domains of .ir, .ac.ir, .org and .com. Data collected via an automatic tool developed by authors in which W3C Markup Validation Service is used for validation tests. Besides, total tags of URLs are counted through it to be able to normalize HTML error frequencies for each home page. Data were analyzed using nonparametric tests via IBM SPSS Statistics 20. Validation test results in about 50 percent failure rate. 38 out of 70 valid libraries are digital libraries and 32 are electronic ones. Mean of HTML error has dramatically decreased in 2017 in comparison with 2015; however Standard Deviation has increased sharply. Moreover, the distribution of HTML error scores is similar across digital and electronic libraries. Regarding conformance to HTML standards, it seems essential to revise the web design of Iranian digital and electronic libraries to fulfill semantic web potentialities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research has been carried out with the aim of studying the web sites of central libraries of universities subordinate to the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology usage of metadata elements and its comparison with Dublin Core standard elements. This study was a comparative survey, in which 40 websites of academic library by using Internet Explorer browser. Then the HTML pages of these websites were seen through the Source of View menu, and metadata elements of each websites were extracted and entered in the checklist. Then, with using descriptive statistics (frequency, percentage and mean) analysis of data was discussed. Research findings showed that the reviewed websites did not use any Dublin Core metadata elements, general metadata Markup language used in design of all websites, the amount of metadata elements used in website, Central Library of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad and Iran Science and Industries with 57% in first ranked and Shahid Beheshti University with 49% in second ranked and the International University of Imam Khomeini with 40% was in third ranked. The approach to web designers was determined too that as follows: the content of source in first ranked and attention to physical appearance source in second ranked and also ownership of source in third position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]