Descriptive Data and Bibliographic Relationships in the Bibliographic Records of Digital Libraries of Iran Based on Resource Description and Access (RDA) Standard

This study aims to identify the descriptive data and bibliographic relationships applied in the bibliographic records of digital libraries of Iran. The accordance rate of these descriptive data, which have been created according to Anglo American Cataloging Rules, is measured by Resource Description and Access (RDA) standard. Design/Methodology/Approach: The present study enjoys practical descriptive-survey method. The method of data collection is observation and analysis. The data gathering tools consist of 3 checklists. This study identifies that the elements associated with the areas like "the artist title and description", "the type of resource ", "the publication areas" and "the Physical description area" are mostly applied among the 8 bibliographic description areas. The survey on bibliographic relationships applied in the bibliographic records of digital libraries show that the Equivalence Relationship and Derivative Relationship are widely used and the application of Accompanying Relationship and Sequential Relationship are at a minimum. Comparing the characteristics of the entities of “work, expression, manifestation and item” based on Resource Description and Access (RDA) Standard with the descriptive data present in bibliographic records in digital libraries prove that most of the characteristics defined in the entities of “work, expression and item” are not available in the mentioned records, but about the characteristics of the entity of “manifestation” a little accordance with the mentioned records is available. Considering the fact that each of the characteristics of the entities of Resource Description and Access (RDA) standard is defined based on the requirements defined in its 2 basic conceptual models i.e. Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) and Functional Requirements for Authority Data (FRAD) and each of them can cover some of these requirements, the concept and function of each required data element needs to be specificallydefined and classified, therefore they can be properly applied in bibliographical records.