Using of standards Case study: Iranians digital libraries

The purpose of this study is to identify and determine standards in Iranian digital libraries that most widely used. The research method is descriptive-analytic. The data gathering tool was a researcher-made questionnaire. The questionnaire consisted of three parts storage standards, Meta data standards and interoperability protocols. Respondents reported that most commonly supported file formats are in storage standards part: in Text File Formats, PDF (With 95% usage); in Image File Formats, JPEG (With 63.7% usage); in Audio Formats, MP3 (With 63.7% usage) and in Video Formats, AVI (With 45.5% usage). Most commonly supported standards are in Meta data part: MARC (With 77.3% usage) and Dublin Core (With 59.1% usage), in Descriptive metadata; METS (With 22.7% usage), in Structural metadata; but PREMIS Administrative metadata standard (With 10% usage) Lowest usage. Z39.50 (With 77.3% usage) is most used in interoperability protocols. OAI (With 22.7% usage) and OAI-PMH (With 9.1% usage) in IRAN less are used. The results of this study showed that 95% of Iranian digital libraries use Digital Library software produced by Iranian companies. Software support from any standard has an effective role in using it by libraries. The result of the Chi- square test showed that university libraries are more likely to use standards than other libraries (national, professional / research, general).