Using New Information Organization Standards and Models in Iranian Libraries: Keeping Pace with International Efforts with Emphasis on Operating Perspective of the Library of Congress

Generating bibliographic records to describe and analyze information resources has been an important library activity from past to present. Despite the changes in information carriers as well as storage and retrieval processes and users information seeking behaviors, resource description is still very important. The changes resulting from new technologies in information organization stems from users’ need to rapid and accurate access to information resources. In other word, users are interested in remote and full text resources and to meet this library catalogs should be responsible as an interface between users and library resources. Accordingly, it`s very necessary to change information organization methods and use from new methods to describing and analyzing documents. For this reason, simultaneously with expand using of web-based and internet technologies, information organization area experts tried to change information organization methods and started this work with cataloging rules. Today, the Resource Description and Access (RDA) Standard is developed for this new environment and different libraries in the world replace previous cataloging rules (Anglo-American) with this new one. In this article and through a review of the related literature, the developments process of cataloging rules and the story of developing new bibliographic methods and standards with emphasis on the Library of Congress activities are described. RDA is a better and more responding standard for the description and access to library resources. Knowing this help Iranian specialists to decide how using RDA rules in Iran.