An Analytical Study on the Functionality of the Resource Description and Access (RDA) Standard for Describing and Organizing Archival Materials

This paper aims to discuss and study the functionality of the Resource Description and Access (RDA) standard for describing and organizing archival material with an analytical approach, taking into account the current developments in the field of modern information technologies. The first part of the paper deals with the approaches in describing and organizing knowledge and information resources including: object-oriented approach, knowledge oriented approach, description by object versus affiliation, and changes in the levels of description (the parts of each document as a content object) according to information contexts. The second part briefly introduces the Resource Description and Access (RDA) standard, the features of archival materials related to the process of description and organization, the position of archival material in the studied standard, the archival standards used as the base for developing RDA, the proper core elements for describing archival material and RDA's capabilities and weak points in meeting the requirements of archival context. Finally, the future of the Resource Description and Access (RDA) standard in describing archival materials and converging standards is studied.