Assessing the Digital Maturity of Library and Information Centres: A Composite Index for Web Platforms and Communication Channels

Abstract

The article develops and tests a quantitative methodology for assessing the observable, communication-facing dimension of digital maturity in library and information centres (LICs). In this study, digital maturity is operationalised in a deliberately bounded sense as the extent to which an institution maintains functional web infrastructure, active digital communication channels and coherent cross-platform contact points. The proposed approach does not attempt to measure organisational digital transformation in its entirety, including internal governance, staff competencies or service impact. Existing studies usually examine website usability, search visibility or social-media activity separately, while the interaction between websites, messenger channels and social-media accounts remains insufficiently formalised. To address this limitation, the study proposes a Digital Maturity Index (DMI), composed of three sub-indices: website quality, social-media and messenger presence, and cross-platform marketing coherence. The index is calculated through an explicit normalisation and aggregation procedure and is adapted to the Uzbek digital ecosystem, where Telegram is a key channel of user contact. The methodology was applied to fifteen LICs in Uzbekistan using structured monitoring of official websites and verified digital channels. The resulting scores are expressed on a 0–1 scale, with a mean of 0.56 and a range from 0.39 to 0.85, and are assigned to three diagnostic bands. The assessment also revealed recurrent inconsistency between websites and active digital channels: this problem affected 66.7% of the institutions and was therefore incorporated into the index as a formal component. The proposed methodology is reproducible, adaptable to different regional communication ecosystems, and suitable for comparative monitoring of the externally observable digital communication systems of libraries.