The Study of Archival Standards and proposing an appropriate Standard for Archival Software: Study of Iranian Archival software and foreign open source software

Standard is a collection of recipes, guidelines or recommendations which is used in production, creating or making goods, products, documents or special resources. The main purpose of the present research is to study the Archival Standards in Iranian Archival software and foreign open source software in order to determine the most appropriate descriptive metadata and Resource description standard (s) as well as considering the Encoder Software support of these standards.

The present study follows a mixed design (hybrid design) in which library method, Delphi method, and descriptive surveys are used. Data gathering tool in library study is fiche, in the Delphi method is researcher-constructed questionnaire and in descriptive survey is checklist. Statistical population of the study contains foreign open source software, Iranian Archival software and Iranian library software. Of course, the last one includes archival material and also maintains descriptive metadata. Altogether, 11 software was detected.
Findings: The current study’s findings suggest that 5 metadata standards including EAD, EAC-CPF, ISAAR, ISAD & ISDF were diagnosed to be appropriate by Delphi Panel members as the most appropriate and suitable archival standards to be used for archival software. Moreover, Archivist toolkit, Archon and ICA-ATOM in terms of supporting the standards which were considered suitable, were diagnosed as the most appropriate archival software. Finally, it can be mentioned that Iranian software has the greatest correspondence with other fields such as Identity Statement Area, Conditions of Access and Use Area & Notes Area.